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QUEEN MARIE OF ROUMANIA 



Eminent Europeans 

Studies in Continental Reality 



By 

Eugene S. Bagger 



With Portraits 



G. P. Putnam's Sons 

New York and London 
Ube Tknicl^erbocker (Press 

1922 



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Copyright, 1922, 

by 
Eugene S. Bagger 



Made in the United States of America 



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NOV 18 '22 



PREFACE 

Much publicity has called to life, too much 
publicity has destroyed Central Europe for the 
English-reading peoples. Prior to the World War 
those peoples had a vague notion, founded entirely 
on implicit belief in the honesty of mapmakers, that 
there were countries called Austria, Hungary, 
Roumania; a learned minority cherished schoolday 
memories suggesting the potentiality of a land 
named Greece, where marble ruins and archaeolo- 
gists led a dreary sort of symbiotic existence ; and it 
was recalled of Bohemia that its most interesting 
feature was a seaboard which could not be found. 
The conflagration of 1914 illuminated, for a mo- 
ment, the landscape stretching between the Rhine 
and the Black Sea; but the sense of reality thus 
evoked was presently wiped out by the vast black 
clouds of Propaganda. The lands whose main 
artery is the Danube became fixed in one's con- 
sciousness as mysterious caverns whence emanated 
atrocities, unpronounceable proper names, informa- 
tion bureaus, national councils, and pamphlets, 
pamphlets, pamphlets, pamphlets. Then followed 
the period of self-determination; and before long 



iv PREFACE 

the English-reading pubhc self-determined that it 
was sick of Central European pamphlets and what- 
ever they stood for. 

Yet to me, a native of the fair city of Budapest, 
the causes expounded by those pamphlets indicated 
realities — all the more real because I could view 
them from the perspective of prolonged absence. 
It is a commonplace to say that one discovers things 
by getting away from them. When I lived at 
Budapest — and I lived there the first twenty-one 
years of my life, — I did not know that there ex- 
isted such a thing as Central Europe. I had to 
come to America to discover Central Europe. Like 
all awakening to the obvious hitherto obscured by 
its very obviousness, the discovery meant a revela- 
tion. 

But what interested me in those pamphlets and 
other printed matter was not the Causes — it was the 
peoples behind them, or rather, people. I realized 
that I knew from first-hand experience that which 
most Americans and Englishmen accepted as an act 
of faith: that those peoples, those people, lived. 

Now, if the peoples of Central Europe became 
unreal to Americans and Englishmen because they 
were disguised as Causes, the personalities of Cen- 
tral Europe became still more unreal because they 
were disguised as Symbols. There is less distance 
between a People — itself a collective being, a 
generalization — and a Cause, than between a Per- 
sonality — something concrete, if only in the crudest 
sense palpable — and a Symbol. My profession 



PREFACE V 

thrust upon me the duty of reading hundredweights 
of literature — pamphlets, books, magazine and 
newspaper articles, dealing with the leaders of Cen- 
tral Europe. Some of these literary products were 
well-informed and informing; others were too-well- 
informed and misinforming; some were well- 
written, others were not; most of them may have 
served the specific purpose of the moment, usually 
connected with some sort of Drive; but whatever 
their other qualities may have been, they hardly ever 
made one suspect that the persons discussed had, 
among other things, souls. These persons were 
banners or at best standard-bearers; they were 
archangels or devils; they were vessels of political 
theories and principles, tokens of interests and 
preferences, sometimes dummies clothed in "human 
interest" anecdotes — human beings they were not. 
I read the biographies of a few — excellent speci- 
mens of political philology, warehouses of cold 
storage information — too many trees, of the forest 
not a trace. 

In the following papers I have attempted to pre- 
sent some of the men, and one woman, who for the 
past eight years signified Central European history, 
as human beings, and not as symbols and political 
abstractions. I did not have to go very far before 
I realized the difficulties of my task — difficulties 
not specific, indeed, but generic — inherent in the 
drawing of "contemporary portraits" of a higher 
than the Sunday supplement plane. Its successful 
performance would have postulated a manifold 



vi PREFACE 

equipment, involving the arts of the journalist, the 
historian and the novelist. It would have required 
the journalist's sense for the topical, the trenchant 
detail, for the manipulation of the subtle threads 
with which things remote geographically and 
psychologically are embroidered upon the conscious- 
ness of the hurried reader. The historian was called 
upon to contribute perspective, the faculty of sifting 
evidence, and the sense of connections. At least as 
important as these would have been the novelist's 
gift of re-creating reality from mere material. Se- 
lection of the essential, suppression of the irrele- 
vant: in this highest precept of all art the three 
requirements converged. 

Such was the nature of my undertaking. I owe 
an apology for the result — not for the plan and the 
aspiration. If I missed my mark, at least it was 
because I aimed too high — not too low. That may 
be no excuse for the rifleman; but the writer may 
plead it in extenuation. 

Comparisons are invidious — especially so for 
the weaker party compared. I am aware of the 
handicap that my book carries in its title. But the 
book had been written before the title was thought 
of; it was chosen because it covers what it should. 
No intelligent and fair-minded critic will charge me 
with the desire to outdo Mr. Lytton Strachey. It 
was only when most of my chapters were already 
typed that I awoke to two facts. First, that I tried 
to see and to present in a new light things whose 
poignancy had worn off by custom and repetition. 



PREFACE vii 

Second, that I tried to write fragments of contem- 
porary history with the methods and intentions of, 
not the chronicler nor the special pleader, but the 
analytical novelist, only working upon historic fact 
and document instead of imaginary material. In 
other words, I was interested in psychology and 
environment rather than in plots and events. My 
book turned out to be a faint attempt at dealing 
with a problem in literary form which had been al- 
ready so brilliantly solved. So much the worse for 
my book. 

There will be those who object to the limitation 
of this volume to personalities from the compara- 
tively unimportant countries of Central and South- 
eastern Europe. Now, treating an ignored subject, 
or the ignored aspects of a subject (and despite 
tons of wartime press output, Central Europe is 
ignored) may be quite as important as elucidating 
new shades of a known one. But that is a defence 
of my theme, not of my title. The fact is — and here 
I touch upon an idea which will recur in the subse- 
quent pages — that in a sense Hungarians, Czechs, 
Roumanians are better Europeans, are more Euro- 
pean, than Englishmen or Frenchmen. England 
is a world ; so is France ; but Hungary, or Czecho- 
slovakia, or Romnania, are mere segments of the 
whole called Europe. 



To the two chapters wherein printed sources were 
extensively used — those on M. Venizelos and King 



viii PREFACE 

Constantine — bibliographies are appended; in the 
others, quotations are credited in the text. As 
regards the two Hellenic chapters I must make 
special mention here of my indebtedness to Mr. 
John Mavrogordato, M.A., whose writings during 
and after the war, published in The New Europe 
and elsewhere, have helped me much toward an 
understanding of Near Eastern problems. For 
valuable suggestions for the chapter on President 
Masaryk, as well as for general encouragement, my 
sincerest thanks are due to Professor Herbert Adol- 
phus Miller of Oberlin College, Ohio. There are 
practically no books in the English language deal- 
ing with the two revolutions and the counter-revo- 
lution in Hungary. For information on these 
subjects I am indebted to the files of the Manchester 
Guardian and the Neue Zilrcher Zeitung, above all, 
to the excellently edited organ of the Hungarian 
bourgeois refugees in Vienna, the Becsi Magyar 
Ujsdg (Vienna Hungarian Gazette). The facts 
relating to the Hungarian White Terror are set 
forth in the Report of the British Joint Labour 
Delegation, headed by Colonel J. C. Wedgwood, 
M.P., which visited Hungary in the spring of 
1920. I take this occasion to convey my thanks 
to Colonel Wedgwood for his courtesy in supplying 
me with that most indispensable document. 

But the two Hungarian chapters could never 
have been written without the guidance that I de- 
rived from the ceuvre of Professor Oscar Jaszi, the 
great intellectual leader of Young Hungary. My 



PREFACE ix 

obligation to him far exceeds the range of my quo- 
tations from his brilHant book, Magyar Calvary — 
Magyar Resurrection, unavailable, alas ! in English. 
It was he who taught me, like so many others of my 
generation, to understand Hungary in terms of 
European culture and modern political science. 

The chapter on Queen Marie of Roumania treats 
that very beautiful and spirited lady in a way which 
our best people might possibly call unorthodox. I 
wish to assure my numerous Roumanian friends — 
who after all may not read the chapter very care- 
fully — that whatever I say about their Queen is by 
no means intended to bear upon their nation. I was 
born in a country where preference for things Rou- 
manian is not, to put it mildly, a common tradition ; 
but I am only glad to state that years of study and 
personal contact have generated in me a sincere ad- 
miration of and affection for the spirit of Young 
Roumania, that truly European spirit which is rep- 
resented by men like M. Octavian Goga, poet, 
statesman, humanist. If I have to confess to a bias 
in the matter of Roumania, it is a distinctly pro- 
Roumanian bias, born of my faith in Young Rou- 
mania as the outpost of Latinity at the eastern gate 
of Europe. 

E. S. B. 

Baltimore, July, 1922. 



The chapters on President Masaryk, Dr. Benes and 
Admiral Horthy have appeared, in part, in The New Repub- 
lic, The New York Times and The Century Magazine 
respectively, and are reprinted here with the kind permission 
of the editors. 



CONTENTS 



I. — Queen Marie of Roumania 1 

Princess of Great Britain and Ireland, Duchess in 
Saxony. Born October 29, 1875. Daughter of 
Duke of Edinburgh and Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, sec- 
ond son of Queen Victoria and the Prince-Consort, 
Duke Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. Married to 
Crown Prince Ferdinand of Roumania January 
10, 1893. 

II. — King Ferdinand of Roumania 25 

Of the House of HohenzoUern-Sigmaringen, the 
elder, Roman Catholic, non-reigning branch of the 
Hohenzollern dynasty. Born August 24, 1865, at 
Sigmaringen. Succeeded his uncle. King Carol I, 
October 10, 1914. 

III. — The Rise of Eleutherios Venizelos ... 47 
Eleutherios Kyriakou Venizelos. Born August 23, 
1864, at Murniaes near Canea, Island of Crete, son 
of Kyriakos Venizelos, a merchant. Doctor of 
Laws, University of Athens, 1887. Chairman of 
Insurrectionary Assembly of Crete, 1897. Council- 
lor of State, 1899. President of the Hellenic 
Council, October, 1910-March, 1915; August, 1915 
-October, 1915. Head of Salonica Government, 
October, 1916-June, 1917. President of Hellenic 
Council, June, 1917-November, 1920. Married 
Helena Schilizzi in 1921. 

IV. — Constantine and the Fall of Venizelos . . 83 
Constantine I, King of the Hellenes, Prince of Den- 
mark. Of the House of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonder- 
burg-Gliicksburg. Born August 31, 1868. Married 
Princess Sophie of Prussia, sister of Kaiser Wil- 
helm, October 28, 1889. Succeeded his father. King 



xiv CONTENTS 

PAGE 

George I, March 18, 1913. Deposed June 12, 1917. 
Resumed power December 19, 1920. Deposed 
again Sept, 27, 1922. Field-Marshal-General of 
Prussia. Colonel-in-Chief of 88th Royal Prussian 
Infantry and of 2nd Royal Foot Guards. 

V. — Thomas Garrigue Masaryk 125 

President of the Czechoslovak Republic. Born March 
7, 1850, at Hodonin, Moravia, son of imperial 
gamekeeper. Lecturer on philosophy, University 
of Vienna, 1879. Professor, Czech University of 
Prague, 1882. Member of Austrian Reichsrat, 
1891. Assumed office as First President of the 
Czechoslovak Republic, November 14, 1918. Re- 
elected for life. May 28, 1920. Married Charlotte 
Garrigue, of Brooklyn, N. Y., in 1878. 

VI. — John Bratiano, Jr 143 

Born 1875. Educated in Bucharest and Ecole 
Centrale, Paris. Premier of Roumania, 1907-1910; 
June, 1914-January, 1918; December, 1918-No- 
vember, 1919; reappointed January, 1922. Married 
to Princess Elise Stirbey. 

VII. — Count Michael Karolyi 163 

Born March 4, 1875. Hereditary member of Hun- 
garian House of Lords. Renounced seat in Upper 
Chamber and got elected to House of Representa- 
tives, 1906. Married to Countess Catherine 
Andrassy November, 1914. President of Hun- 
garian Republic, November, 1918-March 21, 
1919. 

VIII. — Ignace Jan Paderewski 211 

Born November 6, 1860, at Kuryl6wka, Podolia, son 
of a small noble land-owner. Professor, Warsaw 
Conservatory, 1879-81. First concert at Vienna, 
1887; at Paris, 1888. Prime Minister of Poland, 
1918-1919. First married 1879, to Rose Hassal, 
Warsaw, who died a year later. Second wife 
H61ene, Baronne de Rosen, 1899. 



CONTENTS XV 



IX. — Dr. Edward Benes 237 

Premier of the Czechoslovak Republic. Born 1884. 
Educated at Universities of Prague and Dijon, and 
at Sorbonne, Paris. Ph.D., University of Prague, 
1909. Instructor in Sociology, 1912. Foreign 
Minister of Czechoslovakia, 1918. Premier, Sep- 
tember, 1921. 

X. — His Serene Highness Nicholas Horthy de 

Nagyeanya 255 

Regent of Hungary. Born 1867 at Kenderes, 
County Szolnok. Educated at Imperial and Royal 
Naval Academy, Pola, and at Vienna. Naval 
Aide to Emperor Francis Joseph. In World War 
commander of Imperial and Royal Cruiser Novara, 
later Commander-in-Chief of Austro-Hungarian 
Navy. Commander-in-Chief of Hungarian Na- 
tional (White) Army, Szegedin, in spring of 1919. 
Elected Regent March 1, 1920. Married to Paula 
Purely, daufrhter of apothecary at Nagyvdrad 
(Grosswardein). 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

FACING PAGE 

Queen Marie of Roumania Frontispiece 

King Ferdinand of Roumania 28 

Eleutherios Venizelos 50 

King Constantine of Greece 86 

Thomas Garrigue Masaryk 128 

John Bratiano, Jr 146 

Count Michael Karolvi 166 

Count Stephen Tisza 178 

Ignace Jan Paderewski 214 

Edward Benes .... 240 

Admiral Nicholas Horthy 258 



But this I say, brethren, the time is short: it remaineth, 
that they that weep be as though they wept not; and they 
that rejoice, as though they rejoiced not; and they that 
buy, as though they possessed not; and they that use this 
world, as not abusing it: for the fashion of this world 
passeth away. 

I. Corinthians 7: 29-31. 



QUEEN MARIE OF ROUMANIA 



QUEEN MARIE OF ROUMANIA 



She might have been Queen of England. 

The story has never appeared in print. It was 
related to me by an English friend who had heard 
it on a visit to Bucharest, from one of the Queen's 
most intimate friends. The latter, in her turn, had 
it from the Queen herself. Princess Mary was 
sixteen then, the daughter of the Duke of Edin- 
burgh, Queen Victoria's second son. It was on the 
Isle of Wight, and it was Spring. One day the 
young Prince George came to her and said in that 
inimitable casual English manner: "Missy, will you 
be my wife?" It should be recalled that he was the 
second son of the Prince of Wales. The Duke of 
Clarence was still among the living, and there was 
nothing to hint at his early death, nothing but the 
old habit of Anglo-Saxon fate which very often con- 
demns to death the first-born. It is no bad arrange- 
ment, in a way. The system brings happiness to 
the eldest son by giving him the expectancy of his 
estate, and it brings happiness to the second son by 
giving him the estate, the more appreciated because 
unhoped for. Still, there was something to be said 



4 EMINENT EUROPEANS 

for being even the sister-in-law of the future King 
of England, and Princess Mary was sixteen. It is 
the age when girls love to be carried off their feet, 
when girls are not on the lookout for what the 
French call un manage de raison. Why should she 
have refused? 

Withal, my English friend doubted the authen- 
ticity of the story, and when he returned to London 
he asked Lord Knollys, King George's secretary, 
if it was true. It was. Princess Mary refused to 
marry her first cousin. Without looking for further, 
more subtle, reasons, perhaps that in itself ex- 
plained the refusal. Girls at sixteen ( and not only 
at sixteen) love the thrill of a new experience. It 
is difficult for a girl with a restless imagination to 
look forward to her first cousin for the thrill of a 
new experience. 

As to King George, he seems to have lived down 
his disappointment. One of the best husbands in 
the universe, he hardly feels pangs of regret now. 
Perhaps Queen Mary occasionally teases her hus- 
band about the feeling which Queen Marie once 
inspired in him. And, in a subtle way. King 
George had his revenge. The Princess who refused 
to marry the second son of the heir to the English 
crown was known later to favour more than one 
arriviste commoner. 

The months passed; then a year, two years — 
and Princess Mary was still unmarried. She was 
young; but she was not very happy in her parents' 
home, and when Prince Ferdinand, the Roumanian 



QUEEN MARIE OF ROUMANIA 5 

heir-apparent, asked her to become his bride she 
did not refuse. 

Did she love him? It was adventure — of a kind. 
She was to go to Roumania. How wonderful all 
journeys are before you start! Every place is in- 
vested with glamour before you get there. To a 
foreigner, even Hoboken, or Highgate, may sug- 
gest romantic associations. To the young bride 
Roumania was a name — and a sonorous name. It 
derived from a common root with Romance. Then 
she arrived, and before long she felt very lonely 
with her husband, who appeared selfish and had 
confirmed habits like an old bachelor; with King 
Carol and Queen Elizabeth, who, in their childless 
life, had lost all understanding of youth, if they 
ever possessed any. 

She had a child — a boy, as is proper in well-regu- 
lated royal families; and, twelve months later, a 
daughter. Then she rubbed her eyes, and looked 
around. Suddenly the woman of twenty-one felt a 
strong craving for life — to be bathed in, to drink 
experience. 

It was not an especially complicated case. Prin- 
cess Mary (or, as she now spelled her name, Marie) 
was heartily bored. She started highly unconven- 
tional friendships, and was harshly criticized be- 
cause of them by her uncle and aunt, the King and 
Queen, and by her subjects-to-be who were nothing 
if not critical. She tried to ignore criticism, but her 
critics were too many and too strong for her. 

All this happened at the royal court of Bucharest ; 



6 EMINENT EUROPEANS 

it might just as well have happened in a Paris or 
Copenhagen flat, in a suburb of London or Boston. 
Princess Marie was not the first wife in history who 
suddenly felt a desire to see some one other than her 
husband opposite her at breakfast. She had a will. 
In a flash, without consulting any one, she left her 
husband hke Nora of the Doll's House and went 
off to Gotha, where her father was reigning as 
Duke. A few months later Princess Mignon was 
born. 

There were those to whom her exit was not un- 
welcome. Queen Elizabeth was one of their 
number. To her the Princess Marie symbolized a 
defeat — one of the bitterest of her life. The Queen 
had desired to marry her nephew, the Crown Prince, 
to one of her friends. Mile. Vacaresco. She failed. 
Princess Marie had no part in the affair; she ap- 
peared on the scene later, when all was over but the 
newspaper echoes. She was not the cause of the 
Queen's defeat, but she was its memento. The 
Queen hated her, and was glad to see her go. 

Some of the Roumanian politicians, inveterate 
lovers of mischief, were equally gratified. But 
their satisfaction with what seemed to be a final 
break was thwarted by the birth of Princess Mig- 
non. The Crown Prince, unlike his wife, possessed 
a heart. Unlike her, he also had a strong and real 
sense of duty. A rapprochement was engineered. 
Princess Marie returned to her husband and to the 
court. 

This reconciliation, much more than her marriage, 



QUEEN MARIE OF ROUMANIA 7 

was the turning-point in her life. When she 
married she embarked on a voyage of discovery. 
Now she surrendered to a routine. It was a sur- 
render in a rather complete sense. With this young 
princess of twenty-two, locked up in the petty 
pleasures and sorrows of Roumanian court life as in 
a gaol, one had the impression that hers was a case 
of arrested development: that her life had run up 
against a wall. That wall she was never to sur- 
mount. She could not go on — but she could go 
around in a circle, she could go back and forth. 
That restlessness which had made her decline her 
first cousin was still in her blood. It found an out- 
let in a continuous, untiring activity, an activity 
regardless of results and consequences and not 
always particular as to means. 



II 



She began to paint. My English friend was in 
Bucharest when the Arts were wooing her. She said 
to him: "I am only happy on days when I have 
painted for two hours and been on horseback for 
two hours." Painters disliked that remark, but for 
the psychologist it was a gem. Painting, for her, 
was simply another form of exercise, a drain for her 
bursting vitality. 

Nor was painting the end of it. The Roumanian 
court was a young court, but it already had its 
traditions. One of these traditions was that of the 
literary Queen. Under the pen name Carmen 



8 EMINENT EUROPEANS 

Sylva, Queen Elizabeth had written a number of 
books, and those books were not only published, but 
they also sold. They delighted many a snob and 
many a sentimentalist, in Roumania and abroad. 
Surplus of energy, boredom and jealousy of the 
older woman began to hatch a conspiracy in Prin- 
cess Marie; and one fatal day the conspirators 
thrust a weapon into her hand — a pen. Queen 
Carmen was avenged at last. It was her example 
that turned Marie into an author. 

The relationship of kings and queens to the Arts 
is rather a pathetic one. It is not only that they 
want so terribly to be successful. They must be 
successful — in their exalted position they cannot 
afford failure. They might, of course, try anonym- 
ity; but on that term success would not be worth 
having. They crave fame. Being sentimentalists, 
€07 officio, as it were, they hate taking chances ; they 
shrink, as Meredith says somewhere, from the awful 
responsibility of the deed done; they are unac- 
customed to, and abhor, the idea of paying a price. 
Kings and queens of the twentieth century may don 
disguise when they sail forth in quest of the grosser 
pleasures; but when they are out for literary fame 
they wear their full regalia; for they know the 
publicity value of their crowns, and are loath to 
sacrifice it. 

Some fifteen or twenty years ago a friend of 
mine, a clever Frenchman, was introduced, in 
Paris, to King Oscar of Sweden, then on a 
visit in the French capital. The King seemed to 



QUEEN MARIE OF ROUMANIA 9 

like him, and he was quite pleased, even a little 
proud, when he received word that His Majesty 
wished to see him. He felt sure that the King 
sought the benefit of his knowledge of Paris and 
the world ; that he intended to discuss with him the 
relation of Sweden to Norway, or the problem of 
Russian aggression, then the bugbear of Scandi- 
navia. One little thing he forgot : that His Majesty 
was also a poet, and that he had just published a 
volume. He was reminded of it soon enough. 
When he arrived the monarch greeted him most 
cordially, and drew quite close to him. He was, in 
all humility, preparing for his initiation into the 
holy of holies of European diplomacy, when sud- 
denly the question came from the sovereign lips, — 
coaxingly, almost shyly: 

"Do you think that my book will sell?" 
Dr. Johnson said that women preaching re- 
minded him of dogs walking on their hind legs — 
they did not do it well, but the wonder was that they 
did it at all. Queen Marie started writing books in 
English, and thus accomplished one of the miracles 
of her life; for she does not completely master the 
English language, nor any other for that matter. 
Yet she neglects no opportunity to proclaim to the 
world that she is an English princess; on the 
slightest provocation, without any provocation at 
all, she will tell you that she is English, and how 
English she is. A thoroughbred Coburg, she hasn't 
a drop of English blood in her veins. 

Every religion has its martyrs, even the one 



10 EMINENT EUROPEANS 

whose Bible is the Book of Snobs. There are 
people — I have known them — who conscientiously 
buy every book of Queen Marie as soon as it is off 
the presses. I assume that some of these zealots also 
try to read her books, though I doubt if any one 
ever succeeded in reading them, as Daisy Ashford 
would say, to the bitter end. 

For Princess Marie literature was not a vehicle 
of self-expression, not even, primarily, a road to 
fame, but just a safety valve, like her painting, 
like her horseback-riding. She went out riding 
every morning, and on his visits to Bucharest my 
English friend repeatedly had the pleasure of ac- 
companying her. He felt the honour keenly, but his 
pleasure was not unmixed. For she rode her horse 
for hours and hours at a stretch, absolutely careless 
of the creature's fatigue. No Englishwoman could 
ever do that. My friend was told that no horse 
lasted in the royal stables over three or four months. 
"I did not check up," he adds, "the mortality 
among the stenographers to whom Her Majesty 
dictated her books, but it must have been high." 



Ill 



Then the Princess became Queen ; and by a coin- 
cidence the war broke out almost at the same mo- 
ment. For Marie it was a fortunate coincidence. 
She found herself. At last here was an adequate 
outlet for her boundless energy, a field that could 
absorb all the cloudbursts of her activity. She 



QUEEN MARIE OF ROUMANIA 11 

could now be "up and doing" twenty-four hours a 
day if she chose. She could achieve things — more 
than that: she could achieve things that really 
mattered. She could manage men ; she could mould 
events. Heretofore she had to enjoy, in a degree, 
action vicariously in her fairy tales; now she could 
play a part in making real history. She wanted to 
be on the bill all the time — a "headliner," as 
Americans say. 

"I have never been so happy as during the war." 
If Queen Marie never said that, she might have said 
it ; if anybody ever said it, it was a woman. One of 
the women who, "fed up" on the strenuous futility 
called social life, could now address mass meetings, 
organize relief societies and vigilance committees, 
direct war loan campaigns, prepare Red Cross sup- 
plies, even nurse the wounded — anything. No 
woman had a greater opportunity in the war than 
Queen Marie. She lived up to it. 

One of the first tasks the war thrust upon her was 
a removal. A removal, from one city to another, 
means no small thing even in the ordinary middle- 
class household. It is an epoch-making event in the 
life of a court. A long time before the Germans 
pierced the Roumanian front a confidential report 
on the military situation was demanded from head- 
quarters. "Is Bucharest menaced?" asked the court. 
"Not in the least," answered the generals, in chorus. 
Queen Marie is a shrewd woman. "We must pre- 
pare to go to lassy," said Her Majesty. 

And to lassy they went. There was a shortage 



12 EMINENT EUROPEANS 

of munitions at the front, of food in the towns, be- 
cause there was a shortage of rolhng stock. There 
were no cars to accommodate the refugees from the 
devastated areas. But trains were commandeered 
to transfer to the royal palace at I assy all the con- 
tents of the Cotroceni household. All kinds of me- 
diocre furniture, worn-out polar bears' skins turned 
a murky grey with age, cracked Persian pottery, 
embroideries and silks snatched up at Liberty's 
during hasty stays in London. True, Roumania 
was at war; but the Stimmung of the Bucharest 
court had to be recreated at I assy at any cost. 

In the evening little intimate concerts were given. 
Richly painted shades or heavy pieces of silk cov- 
ered the lamps, and a Roumanian violinist, Enesco, 
or a pianist, Mme. Cella Delavrancea, played every- 
thing from Bach to Debussy. Missions came from 
Allied governments, Albert Thomas from France, 
Gutchkoff, the Minister of War, from Russia, to 
stimulate Roumanian resistance. They were wel- 
come but not needed. The King and Queen had 
made up their minds. The Roumanian armies 
would fight on to their last drop of blood. 

A great friend of Her Majesty once said to me: 
"No woman was ever so gifted as she — none, not 
even Sarah Bernhardt or Mrs. Fiske." 

A curious comparison — a Queen and two ac- 
tresses. A truer comparison than would appear at 
first glance. Queens and actresses have many parts 
to play. At lassy Queen Marie, clad all in white, 
with a diamond cross on her breast, a cross of the 



QUEEN MARIE OF ROUMANIA 13 

colour of blood on the white veil that covered her 
forehead, visited the hospitals every morning. In 
the afternoon she gave audiences, either to native 
politicians in need of a coaxing word, or to foreign 
diplomatists. To the French Minister, Count de 
St. Aulaire, later Ambassador in London, she ex- 
plained what a wonderful Queen she was — it was 
she who dragged her hesitant husband, her reluctant 
Premier, into the war. 

Count de St. Aulaire, being the envoy of a mere 
republic, was convulsed with the delights of such 
intimate relation with a real Queen. He flashed 
across Europe enthusiastic dispatches; he said, 
adapting the famous mot of Mirabeau, that there 
was only one man in Roumania, ^nd that was the 
Queen. 

All of which was delicious, and Her Majesty en- 
joyed it to the dregs. Now I don't want to be 
misunderstood. I don't mean to say that the 
tragedy of the war did not affect her. She did not 
remain unmoved by its horrors. But contact with 
the war, and not the least with war's horrors, made 
her a different, and, morally, a richer woman. She 
tasted power. She liked it, and in a weak and re- 
spectful country she was able to hold on to it. 

In a sense her choice was justified at last. As 
Queen of England she would never have had the 
opportunities to rule, to control and initiate, that 
now literally poured into her lap. The court was 
managed by polished but inefficient gentlemen. The 
generals were not much better. One, Mavrocordato, 



14 EMINENT EUROPEANS 

was appointed to a mission with the Allied General 
Staff at Salonica; but the French were advised 
never to let him reach his destination, and they 
wisely heeded the counsel. Another, Catargi, was 
appointed Minister to Belgium, and was now safe, 
in more than one sense, with King Albert's court 
at Le Havre. Two men gained the special con- 
fidence of the Queen. The one was Prince Stir- 
bey, a descendant of former rulers of Roumania. 
The other was a man in khaki, the Canadian Colonel 
Boyle. 

Prince Stirbey was not only a real prince — he 
was the Prince Charming. He was very handsome 
and very rich ; he did not speak much, but the little 
he said was good. He was all the time engaged in 
far-reaching schemes — his one ambition in this 
world was to become richer every day; but he kept 
his schemes to himself. They were not in evidence. 
The one thing that was in evidence was his charm, 
and even about that he had to exercise restraints. 
Who would have thought that the Prince Charming 
had a wife somewhere, and an innumerable host of 
daughters? However, in the Orient women know 
their place and keep it. In any event, his wife and 
his multitudinous daughters did not prevent Prince 
Stirbey from accomplishing, in the briefest time, a 
most brilliant military career. In a few months the 
Lieutenant was promoted to Colonel. No recom- 
pense is too big for charm. Not only did Prince 
Stirbey became the eminence grise, the power be- 
hind the throne, of Roumania — as the Prime 



QUEEN MARIE OF ROUMANIA 15 

Minister's brother-in-law he was an ideal go-be- 
tween from court to the world of politicians. But 
his position had its risks — grave ones. Many a 
Roumanian lip at one time fell into a shape that 
made you believe that you had just heard or were 
just going to hear the word Rasputin. But in the 
Orient, where intrigue was invented, they have also 
perfected the art of directing public attention 
where it belongs. Perhaps Prince Stirbey prayed 
to the Almighty that He would send some one to 
deliver him from being the butt of popular interest. 
Perhaps Prince Stirbey invented Colonel Boyle. 



IV 



Who was Colonel Boyle? His admirers called 
him the Colonel Lawrence of Roumania, local ver- 
sion of the Oxford archaeologist who became states- 
man, strategist and cavalry hero in Arabia. But 
Colonel Boyle's relations with Oxford were less 
patent, and although at one time he may have had 
something to do with excavating, he was no archae- 
ologist. He came from Canada. Behind Canada 
lay Alaska, land of the midnight sun, of gold, of 
prospecting, of tangled lawsuits about clashing 
claims. In Roumania nobody asked for details. 
All he was asked was, "Who are you?" 

"A Colonel, at any rate," answered Boyle. 

"Why not become a hero?" 

"I am prepared for any job that you may give 
me." 



16 EMINENT EUROPEANS 

It was at the beginning of the Bolshevik upheaval 
in Russia. Colonel Boyle was entrusted with the 
task of freeing a certain number of Roumanians 
from the grasp of the Bolsheviki. At that early 
stage the prestige of khaki was still considerable. 
They will tell }^ou in Roumania that Colonel Boyle 
saved five, fifty or five hundred lives in Russia. In 
cases like that it is always a question of appreciation 
rather than of fact. Whatever else his mission ac- 
complished, one result was obvious. Colonel Boyle 
became the Queen's slave. 

"When I saw her I felt like Paul on the Damas- 
cus road," he is reported to have said. 

From that moment on the Queen utilized him — 
sent him on missions that required tact and dis- 
cretion as well as energy and resourcefulness. She 
sent him to rescue her son, the Crown Prince, from 
the clutches of — but that is another story. She sent 
him to try to get for her sister, wife of the Grand 
Duke Kyril, the throne of Russia. Why not? The 
Czar of all the Russians was not only dead — he had 
been buried and lamented in an article by Her 
Majesty the Queen Marie. And had she not the 
blood of Catherine the Great in her veins? Once 
she was passing a column of Russian soldiers. One 
exclaimed: "There — what a good Empress she 
would make for us!" But she was engaged else- 
where. Her sister had been the Duchess of Hesse. 
She had divorced her husband in order to marry the 
Grand Duke Kyril of Russia. They were both 
alive, and although handicapped, in Orthodox eyes, 



QUEEN MARIE OF ROUMANIA 17 

by the matter of the divorce, still the nearest claim- 
ants to the Russian throne. 

Boyle had once had a stroke in an airplane, but be 
was fond of flying nevertheless. He was sent to the 
Wrangel front to ascertain how long it would take 
for Wrangel to reinstate the Romanoffs. He re- 
turned with the message that it was a question of 
six months. Six days later General Wrangel was 
floating quietly toward Constantinople, and the 
coronation of the Grand Duke Kyril was postponed 
sine Me. 

There is no use crying over spilt crowns. A 
French proverb says, ^'Un amant de perdu, dix de 
retrouve." In a period of great upheavals if you 
miss a throne you may find another if you only look 
around quickly enough. Venizelos was tottering in 
Greece; the exchange of Constantine was rising. 
Constantine's son suddenly became a good match. 
Prince Stirbey — or was it Colonel Boyle? — was 
dispatched to Switzerland to negotiate the marriage 
between the Prince Georgios of Greece and the 
Princess Elizabeth of Roumania. The mission was 
crowned with success. 

But that is rushing too far ahead. The war was 
still on. The Germans were advancing, they were 
menacing the Roumanian rear. The court was pre- 
pared for any emergency. Elaborate plans were 
made. The King and Queen would take refuge in 
a Russian town. The Roumanian army would with- 
draw to the Caucasus, if need be, but it would fight 
for every inch of ground. . . . 



18 EMINENT EUROPEANS 

The Roumanian government signed the separate 
peace on May 7, 1918. Small countries have to 
play safe even when they embark on an adventure. 
Some of the great Scottish families had sons both 
in the Jacobite and the Whig camp, so that they 
might keep their estates whichever side won. Simi- 
larly, small countries whose fate hinges on the 
pleasure of the Great Powers, usually have two sets 
of politicians ready to change places according to 
the ups and downs of international rivalry. Rou- 
mania had a set of pro-Ally statesmen that had 
brought her into the war. She also had a set of 
pro-German politicians who were prepared to come 
into power as soon as their rivals went out. The 
Premier who signed the separate peace in 
Bucharest was M. Marghiloman. 



Half a year passed, and Germany was defeated. 
The Marghiloman ministry went out ; the Bratiano 
ministry — the old pro-Ally war cabinet — came 
back. Once more peace, officially so called, reigned 
in Europe. 

The Queen journeyed to the West. The war 
had ended; but not her war-born activities. Her 
trip was one of pleasure combined with business. 
She did not cease to work for her country. She 
was asked by Roumanians to buy locomotives and 
rolling stock, to sell wheat and maize for them. In 
Paris, beside attending innumerable social engage- 



QUEEN MARIE OF ROUMANIA 19 

ments and buying almost as innumerable dresses 
she found time to discuss with leaders of industry 
and finance the needs of Roumania. She was ever 
on the verge of concluding big transactions; but 
they seldom came off entirely. Hitches occurred. 
They couldn't be helped. The Queen had an imagi- 
nation that was all the more apt to run away with 
her as it had been fed the richest of foods for the 
past three years. Be that as it may — the fact re- 
mains that Queen Marie unfolded a skill as a press 
agent for her country that any professional might 
envy. She "sold" Roumania to the West. 

But Paris, after all, is a comparatively easy place 
for royalty. After forty years of the Republic a 
queen — any queen — cannot help being a social suc- 
cess. Dinners are given for her by the Comtesse de 
Beam, the Comtesse Aynard de Chabrillan, the 
Marquise de Flers and others. Often at these 
dinners a strange hissing sound may be heard above 
the din of conversation and laughter, the ruffling of 
silks and the clinking of hand-cut glasses. It is the 
sound of little private axes being ground by a pru- 
dent and ambitious hostess. But it takes an ex- 
perienced ear to perceive that discreet noise. They 
still know how to make guests happy in the grand 
style at Paris. 

London is different. The acid test of twentieth- 
century royalty is its reception in England. One 
might almost say to a king, "Tell me with whom you 
associate in England and I tell you what kind of a 
king you are." 



20 EMINENT EUROPEANS 

To begin with, the attitude of the British aristo- 
cracy even to their own King is a peculiar one. 
They worship the institution of monarchy with an 
ahnost religious zeal. But their respect for the 
office does not preclude indifference, or worse, to its 
incumbent. That King Edward — who really was 
an excellent ruler, but who had had his escapades in 
his youth and spoke English with a German accent 
— did not have a very happy time of it with a certain 
section of the British aristocracy is well enough 
known. Who can be more royalistic than the Duke 
of Buccleuch? Yet it is possible for a Montagu- 
Douglas-Scott to look down upon a mere Saxe- 
Coburg — not to mention their recently acquired 
name of Windsor — as a kind of, well, upstart. To 
a degree it is nothing but self-defence — love of com- 
fort. The presence of a King or Queen adds noth- 
ing to the glory of an English or Scottish duke, but 
it does constrain him, and dukes do not like to be 
constrained. 

And if some of these great houses are mildly re- 
luctant to associate with a King of England, it is 
only what one may expect if they refuse point blank 
to consort with what they call minor royalty. Snobs 
of all nations, if they have been good on earth, go 
to England when they die, and good English snobs 
remain there — it's safer than Heaven. 

Consequently, to say that the position of a 
"minor royalty" in London is none too pleasant is 
an understatement. As to their relations with His 
Britannic Majesty — a member of the Household 



QUEEN MARIE OF ROUMANIA 21 

once said that they might almost as well be mere 
Americans. This, of course, is an exaggeration; 
yet great is the day, and correspondingly rare, when 
they are bidden to a short informal meal, or to a long 
formal function, in the company of the King. They 
are treated at Court as an exalted kind of poor 
relation. If they are out for a "good time," socially, 
they are left to their own devices. 

Yet they are not altogether forlorn even in Lon- 
don. All over the world, from Punta Arenas and 
Johannesburg to Moscow, there are branches of the 
international organization known as the Fraternity 
of Social Climbers. Their motto is, "If you can't 
have the sun and moon to play with, content your- 
self with the stars." Around each of the minor 
royalties visiting in London there is a fairly large 
and quite brilliant — too brilliant — court of what 
are called vie^ia^ nouveaux riches, ambitious Jews 
whose fortunes were founded in the comparatively 
ancient times of, say, the Boer War, of foreigners 
who want to become, or at least pass for English. 

When the King and Queen of Roumania come to 
London they are, and are not, at a loss for company. 
They are invited to a number of official and quasi- 
official functions and entertainments dutifully 
given for them by members of the Cabinet, the 
Prime Minister, the Master of the Horse — and be- 
yond that they have to accept, and even be grateful 
for, the association of a little inner circle of first, or, 
at the best, second generation millionaires who have 
everything in the world they can wish for except 



22 EMINENT EUROPEANS 

security of social tenure. Their greatest friends are 
the Lord and Lady Astor, and Lord Astor's sister, 
Mrs. Spender Clay, of whom Queen Marie is par- 
ticularly fond. 

How little Queen Marie, who claims to be Eng- 
lish, knows about Britain is attested by the 
rumoured fact — I must give it as such — that she 
attempted to marry off her daughter to the eldest 
son of the haughtiest of Scottish dukes. It was 
simply out of the question. German princes, before 
the war the most reliable and abundant supply of 
mates for female royalty, were somewhat out of the 
fashion ; so the Queen finally picked for the Princess 
Elizabeth's husband a Prince whose German origin 
was passably overlaid by a few coats of Danish and 
Greek tradition. It was an ambition easy enough 
to fulfill. True, the Crown Prince Georgios was a 
nephew of the Kaiser; but he also was Crown 
Prince of Greece. He became Queen Marie's 
son-in-law. 



VI 



All things considered, European capitals — the 
important ones — offer a rather slippery ground for 
the feet of Queen Marie. With Western Euro- 
peans she always has a sense of insecurity. But 
there is a land of promise for her — the land of 
promise for all uprooted: America. 

All her uncertainty vanishes, as by touch of the 
well-known magic wand, in her contact with Ameri- 



QUEEN MARIE OF ROUMANIA 23 

cans. Then she is in her element. She is a live 
woman — she is very beautiful, she has "pep" and 
imagination; she would cut a figure even were she 
not a "crowned head," as American newspapers 
wistfulty put it. But she is a queen ; and for Ameri- 
cans she represents the eighth wonder of the world, 
the Shulamite, the fulfilment of a hundred and fifty- 
years' republican dreams, the Queen. She is the 
fond union of legend and reality ; she, the author of 
fairy tales, is a fairy tale herself, and also a live, 
honest-to-goodness fairy who will come to lunch if 
asked. La Rochefoucauld said: ''Le plaisir de 
Vamour est d'aimer." The Queen is not only loved 
by Americans : she loves Americans. Never is she 
more conscious of her charm than when she is with 
Americans. She ought to be a happy woman, for 
she need not take chances on Heaven. She can look 
forward to beatification on this earth. On the day 
when she lands in America a whole continent will 
turn into an altar where the smell of newsprint will 
substitute incense. 

At the beginning of the war she was represented 
in a German paper — was it "Simplicissimus?" — as 
saying: "Now we have to mobilize the photograph- 
ers." Of course she did not say that; but if she had 
said anything of the kind she would have said movie 
camera men. Yes, for Queen Marie, America is the 
Land of Opportunity. But even in America she 
ought to be warned against little social mistakes. 
Every once in a while she sends letters to the Ajneri- 
can press; but she usually selects the wrong news- 



24 EMINENT EUROPEANS 

papers. Once, on the eve of one of her several visits 
to the United States that did not come off, she sent 
out 435 photographs — one to each Congressman. 



VII 



Still, one must not be unfair to her. She writes 
letters that make excellent reading and have a real 
literary quality; and she adores her children — she 
was prostrated by the death of her son Mircea in 
the dark days of the war. But one cannot forget 
her treatment of horses. She rides them to death 
in three months. 



KING FERDINAND OF ROUMANIA 



25 



KING FERDINAND OF ROUMANIA 



The French statesman Cardinal Mazarin was 
wont to ask candidates for appointments in his ser- 
vice, "Are you happy?" Siete felice? 

The query was a wise one, and the adjective well 
chosen ; for felice means more than happy ; it implies 
the idea of good luck. A connoisseur of men, 
Mazarin knew that unhappy people — people, that 
is, born with a hea\y, brooding temperament, 
habitual worriers, are usually the unlucky ones — as 
if Fate took a malicious pleasure in seeking out the 
thin-skinned, those who feel pinpricks as stabs and 
scratches as sabre cuts. "Ce sont toujours les 
m ernes qui se font tuer/' says the French proverb. 
And German slang has a most picturesque ex- 
pression for these m ernes, for the person in whose 
pursuit misfortune goes out of its way — it calls 
him a Peclivogel, a "pitch bird" literally. He is 
an inverted Midas whose touch turns gold into 
lead. 

If externals alone determined people s lives King 

Ferdinand of Roumania might, indeed, be called a 

happy man, and a lucky one, too. He reigns over 

27 



S8 EMINENT EUROPEANS 

a peaceful country of seventeen million inhabitants, 
potentially one of the richest lands in Europe, just 
doubled by a victorious war; he is not unpopular; 
he has a lovely wife, good shooting, and, in his 
library, many fine books, among which those by 
Anatole France are even cut. Still, if one looks a 
little more closely at the chart of his life, it becomes 
apparent that he has not been favoured by Fate as 
much as he could desire. There was a little joker, as 
American slang has it, concealed somewhere in al- 
most every one of the gifts bestowed upon him by a 
squint-eyed Providence. 

To begin with, he might be called good-looking, 
but for — That "but for" has pursued him all his 
life like a second shadow. He is slim and fair; he 
has well-shaped hands and a small head, with a long 
nose that might express character ; but his forehead 
is narrow to the extreme, the forehead of a man 
who is shy as well as obdurate. That, however, is 
not the worst of it. When he was born it was found 
that his ears protruded like the wings of a windmill ; 
as if an impatient teacher had precociously pulled 
them, anticipating by years some childish trespass. 
A nurse was instructed to flatten down the re- 
bellious flaps by the application of bandages. Dur- 
ing the first months of a baby's life that defect is 
corrected easily enough. But the nurse forgot 
about the bandages, and Prince Ferdinand was 
marked for life by ears the shape and size of which 
were not compensated for by any special acoustic 
capacity. 




u. & u. 



KING FERDINAND OF ROUMANIA 



KING FERDINAND OF ROUMANIA 29 

It is a commonplace to speak about the relation 
of people's character and their exterior. A physical 
trait will infallibly influence a sensitive and self- 
conscious youth such as Prince Ferdinand of Ho- 
henzollern-Sigmaringen grew up to be. For him 
it is to pass through life full of a good will toward 
men and things which he vainly struggles to express 
adequately. He has a kind heart ; he has a genuine 
sense of duty. But over the council of his mental 
and moral traits shyness presides, a relentless chair- 
man. He is the King with the Inferiority Complex. 

When in 1866 Prince Charles of Hohenzollern- 
Sigmaringen — of the elder, Catholic, non-reigning 
branch of the House of Zollern — was offered the 
throne of the then Principality of Roumania, he 
was at first inclined to refuse. He consulted Bis- 
marck, who advised him to accept, but in a rather 
flippant spirit. "Cela vous fera des jolis souvenirs 
de jeunesse" the Iron Chancellor remarked. For 
once Bismarck guessed wrong. Charles accepted, 
and before long Prince Carol became King — a 
wealthy and important King at that, whose friend- 
ship was sought by Czar and Emperor. He estab- 
lished in Roumania the House of Hohenzollern — 
and today Roumania is the only country where a 
Hohenzollern still reigns. 

Thus one of Charles's dreams was fulfilled. He 
became the founder of a dynasty. Another dream 
— to become the founder of a family — remained 
unfulfilled. He ardently hoped for a son — his wife 
gave him a daughter, and this daughter died young. 



30 EMINENT EUROPEANS 

But he had nephews, and one of these, Prince Fer- 
dmand, was elected Principe Mostenitor, heir- 
prince, by the Roumanian diet. 

"Lives of crown princes remind us. . ." They 
remind us, in the first place, of the tribulations of 
Frederick the Great when he was not great as yet. 
He led, as everybody knows, a dog's life, while his 
father was still alive and kicking — very literally so. 
But even at its best a crown prince's position is any- 
thing but enviable, if judged by the standards of his 
own class. Firstly, there is the usual feeling of the 
heir to a great fortune, the "too good to be true" 
feeling: "I shall never come into my own." Then, 
they have to contend with the natural jealousy and 
distrust on the part of the monarch, whose death in 
their heart of hearts they cannot help hoping for. 
That jealousy and distrust, just as naturally, breed 
in them a spirit of antagonism, a critical attitude 
with a strong emotional accent, as Freudians would 
say. Queen Victoria steadfastly refused the co- 
operation of her eldest son, and even declined to 
share with him the knowledge of political and diplo- 
matic affairs which she accumulated during her 
unusually long and eventful reign. It so happened 
that his mother's jealousy was for the Prince of 
Wales a blessing in disguise. It turned him loose 
on life at large, and his contact with unexpur- 
gated reality, maintained through the long years 
of his waiting, made him a very wise King indeed, 
one of the most human and humane in modern 
times. 



KING FERDINAND OF ROUMANIA 31 

II 

In a sense, the lot of the Crown Prince Ferdinand 
was somewhat better. King Carol did not keep 
him at arm's length. He consulted his prospective 
successor, taught him, treated him much as the head 
of a big commercial concern would treat an earnest 
and ambitious son. But Ferdinand was labouring 
under what is perhaps, short of that lack of re- 
straints which makes the criminal, the greatest of 
moral handicaps — an exaggerated shyness, a lack of 
self-confidence. His subjects-to-be did not make 
things easier for him. Roumanians have a great 
many defects, but one of the qualities of these de- 
fects is an overdose of cleverness. They are too 
clever to be good. Now here was this young and 
timid foreigner who did not speak their language, 
whose mental processes were obviously slower than 
their own, who was not "in" on the great many per- 
sonal intrigues, animosities, ad hoc alliances, log- 
rolling constellations that make up ninety per cent 
of the political life in small countries (as in great 
ones), and who was, nevertheless, destined to rule 
them eventually. They were far from accepting 
that eventuality, those potential subjects. Worse 
even, Prince Ferdinand himself had his doubts as 
to the happy ending. His uncle the King was 
healthy and strong. The King's mother was still 
alive, a very energetic lady of ninety. Ferdinand 
felt that his chance would never come, that his 
uncle would outlive him. 



32 EMINENT EUROPEANS 

Most of the mischief that mars this best possible 
of worlds is not the doing of evil people. Hundred 
per cent wickedness is a rare phenomenon, as rare 
as genius ; there is not enough of it to go around. It 
is the sentimentalists who are responsible for the 
majority of our messes. Intent on the right, but 
with too little judgment, they occasionally blunder 
their way to justification; but most of the time they 
merely act as section hands on the line of com- 
munication to hell. Bad people commit crimes, 
but sentimentalists commit mistakes, which, as the 
French rightly say, are much worse. 

Queen Elizabeth of Roumania, better known un- 
der her pen name as Carmen Sylva, was a senti- 
mentalist. The most conspicuous thing about her 
was her heart. She was one of those beings who 
not only feel everything with the deepest intensity, 
but who make no secret of the fact. She quivered 
and throbbed and sighed and loved all the time. 
Emotional strain was for her what water is for a 
fish. Superlatives were the only words she used, 
and she talked a good deal, and wrote as much. 
Her favourite preoccupation was being at the mercy 
of somebody or something. She was not only at 
the mercy of her own loves ; she was at the mercy of 
the loves of other people, of the first comer. She 
was, in a word, what in the language of the United 
States is somewhat rudely but graphically described 
as an easy mark. One of her maids-of-honour, 
Helene Vacaresco, rather a clever and gifted per- 
son, conquered her completely. Mile. Vacaresco 



KING FERDINAND OF ROUMANIA 33 

wrote. Prose, poetry, anything. She paid Her 
Majesty the subtle compliment of translating her 
works into French. The Queen regarded her as 
her best friend. One day the Queen had an 
inspiration. 

Roumanians, notwithstanding their German 
rulers (wags said, because of them) were even then 
a strongly Francophile people. The King was 
sneered at as a Prussian. The Queen had a poet's 
imagination; also, a poet's lack of practical sense. 
She wanted to help the King in overcoming the 
general antipathy against things German which 
included the dynasty. The Crown Prince, true 
enough, was a German. But let this German 
Crown Prince marry a Roumanian woman, and 
then — In a word. Carmen Sylva conceived the bril- 
liant idea of a marriage between the Crown Prince 
Ferdinand and the translator of her works into 
French, MUe. Vacaresco. 

The Queen lived in Roumania, but she thouglit in 
a vacuum. One of the trifles she forgot was her 
own raison d'etre. She forgot how she had come to 
be Queen in Roumania. The Roumanian statesmen 
chose a foreigner to rule them because they would 
never choose a Roumanian. Charles of Hohen- 
zollern-Sigmaringen was King of Roumania not 
so much by grace of God as by grace of the mutual 
jealousy of the great Roumanian clans. And the 
Roumanian politicians did not go to Germany for 
a King merely in order to be saddled with a 
Roumanian Queen. 



34 EMINENT EUROPEANS 

Meanwhile Ferdinand and Helene were left to 
themselves a good deal. They were photographed 
together. Suddenly Queen Elizabeth sprang Car- 
men Sylva's idea on the Cabinet. She announced 
the engagement. The Cabinet, for once, put down 
its foot like one man. Mile. Vacaresco would never 
do. The Cabinet won. The Queen was deeply mor- 
tified. Mile. Vacaresco had to leave the country. 
She went abroad in quest of solace and found it in 
collecting newspaper clippings about herself and, 
after a while, in publishing a book on "Kings and 
Queens I Have Known." Ferdinand also went 
abroad, in quest of a bride. After a while he found 
one. 

He found a wife who might have been Queen of 
England, and who now was willing to live with him 
in his distant and comparatively unimportant 
country. Princesses of the Blood usually marry 
because it is the easiest escape from being bullied 
into marrying somebody else. The second suitor 
often has a good opportunity prepared by the re- 
fusal of the first. In 1893 the Crown Prince Ferdi- 
nand married Princess Mary, daughter of the Duke 
of Edinburgh, and brought his wife home to 
Bucharest. 



Ill 



He was happy. But his bliss was not unmiti- 
gated. The eternal "but for" arose again. We 
know the story of the poor man who quite unex- 



KING FERDINAND OF ROUMANIA 35 

pectedly inherits a huge fortune from some long- 
forgotten second cousin in the Antipodes. He who 
has led a quiet, solitary life, reasonably contented in 
fulfilling his simple wants, is now infested by a host 
of friends whose emergence was just as sudden as 
that of the heritage. His door is besieged by beg- 
gars, amateur and professional ; his mail is swamped 
by wonderful offers of infallible investments. His 
life is poisoned, and he ends by wishing back his 
poverty. The story of the man who marries one of 
the most beautiful women in Europe is rather 
analogous. Exceptional beauty in one's wife is a 
mixed boon. One enjoys it to a degree, of course. 
But then, one seldom sees the face of a person one 
has lived with for years. One is envied ; but one does 
not envy oneself. Those who envy you have almost 
more fun than yourself; for they enjoy vicariously 
a happiness that for you has become, more or less, 
a mere routine. 

And Princess Marie, as she called herself, was 
as audacious as her husband was shy. Her adven- 
tures on the Riviera are remembered — daring 
though, in the event, harmless escapades at masque 
balls and the like. Then there was the stranger 
who saw her in front of a milliner's window and 
asked her permission to buy her the hat she was 
admiring. "Certainly," she said and stepped 
into the shop, followed by the man whose ardour 
materially cooled when she gave her name and 
address. Such anecdotes could be multiplied. 



36 EMINENT EUROPEANS 

But this one will give a taste of her husband's 
difficulties. 

One of these difficulties was geography. The 
poet Ovid wrote his Tristia because he was exiled 
to Tomi by an angered Csesar; and Tomi was in 
Roumania. Every married woman sooner or later 
in life passes through the phase of Ibsen's heroine 
Nora, though most are not conscious of what is 
happening to them, and resign after a brief and 
futile flurry. It is one thing to see, for a short 
interlude, another man opposite one at the break- 
fast table; quite another to shed the chains that 
have been forged forever. One day Princess Marie 
left Roumania for her mother's home, resolved 
never to return. Months passed, advisers were con- 
sulted, and some of them were of opinion that the 
departure was not only final but also for the ulti- 
mate good. Princess Marie, they said, knew not a 
good thing when she saw it. She had had the privi- 
lege of living in Roumania, and did not appreciate 
it. M. Maioresco, who later became Premier, was 
especially unrelenting, and was supported by 
Queen Carmen, who had forgotten nothing. But 
more months passed, and at last a baby was born 
to the Crown Princess. Prince Ferdinand, as al- 
ways, shrank from a violent decision. He was 
good. He forgave. It is difficult for courtiers 
to be plus royaliste que le roi, especially when the 
king appears in his role of husband. There is a 
Chinese proverb which says, "You always get your 
own food in a chipped bowl." Prince Ferdinand, 



KING FERDINAND OF ROUMANIA 37 

he of the inferiority complex, had long ago resigned 
himself to the chipped bowl. His forgiveness was 
part intrinsic kindness, part surrender to fate, part 
a sense of duty as future ruler. It was not only 
his domestic happiness that was served to him in 
cracked china. 

Like a real feudal lord, like a true gentleman, 
he was extremely fond of hunting. It was his great 
relaxation from the very tiring occupation of a 
king which is not unlike that of a managing editor 
of a great newspaper; it consists of signing a few 
state papers and reading a great many newspapers. 
The greatest sport for a Roumanian gentleman is 
the bear hunt. One was organized for the Crown 
Prince. He had been looking forward to it for 
weeks. He was thrilled with expectancy. For 
two full days he climbed difficult mountain passes, 
yearning for the encounter. At last the bear ap- 
peared. The Prince shouldered his rifle. Suddenly 
the bear rose on its hind legs and danced. It had 
been commandeered by an all too obliging host, 
anxious lest his princely guest should not have good 
sport. The Prince went home, furious. The story 
swept Roumania like a cataract. 

Another of his subjects asked him to a pheasant 
shoot. It was a bad year for pheasants, so a train- 
load of birds, in boxes, was imported from France 
and Germany. They were let loose in the woods, 
but when the great moment arrived they refused 
to rise. The beaters were at a loss. They per- 
formed extra antics to no avail — the pheasants 



38 EMINENT EUROPEANS 

stood, or rather lay, pat. It was very pathetic 
indeed. Poor Prince! His bear had risen; his 
pheasants did not. It was wrong all around. It 
was Fate.^ 

IV 

Another pleasure of Kings is the war game. 
For that Prince Ferdinand inherited a taste from 
thirty generations of Hohenzollern ancestry. More 
directly, he inherited it from his uncle and prede- 
cessor, King Charles, who was a good soldier and 
achieved great distinction in the Russo-Turkish 
war of 1877. Ferdinand had had his share of 
manoeuvres. He yearned for the real thing. In 
1912 Rulgaria and Serbia fought shoulder to 
shoulder against Turkey. Having been friends 
and allies for such a long time — six full months — 
they decided it was getting too much for them, and 
fell on each other's throats. Roumania had inter- 
ests at stake. She intervened. At last, a war! 
Prince Ferdinand was appointed in command. His 
mouth watered. The great moment! He conceived 
strategic plans, envisaged great battles, dreamed 
victories. Alas for him! the Bulgarians refused to 
fight. They surrendered with their whole army. 
The bear had risen. It was wrong. The Bul- 
garians lay down. Wrong again. Meagre though 
the Roumanian victory was, it was bought at a 
Pyrrhic price. The Bulgarians had cholera, and 
they infested the victors. The farce all but turned 
into tragedy. 



KING FERDINAND OF ROUMANIA 39 

In the war of 1913 the Roumanian generals had 
not tasted blood. But they smelt it a little, and 
decided it was good. They looked forward to their 
next chance. The world war was lurking below 
the line of the horizon. At the end of 1914 it 
seemed as if there had been a turn in the fortunes 
of the Crown Prince Ferdinand. His uncle, whom 
he had believed imperishable, died, and the Crown 
Prince became King. He also became Commander- 
in-Chief of the Roumanian army. He lived up to 
the exigency of the moment. He designed a 
new uniform. It was one of the great achieve- 
ments of his life. But still greater ones were in 
the offing. 

The world war was on. It was only a question 
of time — Romnania, with her army clothed in the 
brand-new uniform devised by the King, was to 
step in at the right moment. With her powerful 
allies staunchly on her side, she was sure to win. 
Just who these powerful allies would be, whether 
the Entente or the Central Powers, was for the 
moment undecided; but that was a secondary con- 
sideration. On paper Roumania was a kind of 
non-resident member of the Triple Alliance; but 
Italy had been a regular member, and still . . . 
The majority of the Roumanian people were 
pro- Ally; and Ferdinand inherited from his uncle 
King Carol among other pleasant and useful 
heirlooms a very keen hatred of his kinsman the 
Kaiser. 

In the spring of 1916 the fateful hour struck. 



40 EMINENT EUROPEANS 

The Russian government assured King Ferdinand 
that the Bulgarians would desert the German cause 
as soon as they saw that they would have to fight 
against the Russians who were to be sent to aid 
Roumania. Marshal Joffre telegraphed that Aus- 
tria was as good as beaten, that Roumania would 
not meet with any resistance on the road to Buda- 
pest, that she was on the eve of realizing her long- 
cherished dream of annexing Transylvania. Rou- 
mania was swept into the war on the side of the 
AJlies by a tidal wave of hope and enthusiasm. 
The Commander-in-Chief was happier than any- 
body else. 

This time the adventure of the dancing bear was 
not repeated. Germany realized that she was stak- 
ing all. Troops were rushed east from Verdun and 
hurled against the Roumanians. The Russian army 
ran true to form; that is, it ran. The Roumanian 
government, headed by the King, had to evacuate 
Bucharest and transfer to lassy. For another year 
resistance dragged along. Then came the debacle, 
and King Ferdinand was compelled to sign the 
separate peace. He had to dismiss his pro- Ally 
ministry and to surround himself with the old pro- 
German clique. 

Another turn of fortune's wheel, and Germany 
was downed. The King and Queen returned to 
Bucharest in triumph. The incredible came to pass : 
Roumania emerged from a lost war with her terri- 
tory and population doubled, with her national 
dream completely realized. She gained far more. 



KING FERDINAND OF ROUMANIA 41 

comparatively, than either France or England. It 
was nothing short of a miracle. 

Nor did the wheel of fortune, once started in the 
right direction, stop at this one winning number. 
Roumania had her share of the spoils ; now she was 
to taste military triumph, all the sweetness of re- 
venge over the hereditary enemy. The Soviet Gov- 
ernment of Hungary was nearing its end; but it 
was for the Roumanian army to administer the 
death blow. Ferdinand could now enter Budapest 
at the head of his victorious troops. But the chance 
came too late. The King had lost zest in military 
adventure. He disliked the idea of a war which 
was seventy-five per cent politics and only a quarter 
fighting. Riding in triumph over the little Jew 
Bela Kun did not whet his fancy. He stayed at 
home while his regiments marched into the Magyar 
capital. 

Suddenly he felt a thirst for Life, with a capi- 
tal L. Now it was he who passed through the 
stage of Nora. He wanted to see the world. He 
was past fifty, and he had never seen Paris. He 
craved Paris. It took him a year to carry out his 
plan. But at last it was realized. He was in Paris. 
He placed a wreath on the monument of the Un- 
known Warrior of France; he visited the tomb of 
Napoleon at the Invalides. In a very substantial 
sense, this was more than a pleasure trip. It was 
a great victory that he scored at last in an old 
family feud. He was a HohenzoUern ; and he was 
in Paris. Where was his kinsman the Kaiser, 



42 EMINENT EUROPEANS 

where was the Crown Prince? They could never, 
never, never hope to enter the earthly paradise 
called Paris. No Hohenzollern of the Protestant, 
imperial branch could. The Sigmaringen branch, 
which now was the only ruling one, the royal house 
of Roumania, had always regarded itself the true, 
the elder line of the Hohenzollern family; but for 
centuries they were overshadowed by the younger 
line, the upstart Brandenburgians, who had 
achieved their greatness simply because their an- 
cestor, a monk, broke his vow and stole the estates 
of his order. For once in his life, there in Paris, 
Ferdinand felt like a conqueror . . . 



V 



In this twentieth century of ours what one might 
call the fairytale view of kingcraft and kingship 
is still a popular one. Newspapers and magazines 
of the order euphemistically termed yellow picture 
the rulers of this world as childish persons impos- 
sibly happy in their resplendent uniforms, with 
their breasts covered with no end of ribbons and 
stars. Nor are their heads forgotten — albeit drawn 
as mere pegs to hold their crowns. Kings in news- 
papers always wear their crowns to breakfast. 
There is something to be said for that version. 
Resplendent uniforms are actually worn at not a 
few court ceremonies, ribbons and stars are treas- 
ures coveted even by those who have the right to 
bestow them and thus ought to know what they 



KING FERDINAND OF ROUMANIA 43 

are worth; and as to the heads surmounted by 
crowns that in real hfe are mostly metaphorie, in 
most cases the less said the better. 

And yet behind the unreal glamour of their 
anachronistic existence the few kings and queens 
still extant lead an anxious and cramped life, des- 
perately struggling to keep pace with a time that 
is running away from them. First of all — not that 
this is put forward as a revelation — there is the 
daily risk of attempts on their lives. Secondly, 
there is the political danger, ever-growing, of revo- 
lution. The spectre of unemployment haunts sov- 
ereign dreams oftener than ordinary mortals would 
think. Some years ago an attempt was made on 
the life of the King of Spain as he was riding in 
a carriage up the Champs Elysees on the side of 
President Poincare. When all was over the latter 
asked his guest how he felt. "Oh, I am getting used 
to it," Alfonso replied. "This is the third incident 
of its kind. There were two attempts made on me 
before I was twenty-one. Ce sont les risques du 
metier." 

There are other risks connected with the trade. 
The same King Alfonso was, in the days after the 
Armistice, asked by a friend of the writer whether 
opposition to his reign was strong in Spain. "Since 
1914," the King replied, "thirty-nine dynasties have 
lost their thrones. One must always be ready for 
everything." 

That wonderful London institution, Lloyd's, is, 
as the reader knows, prepared to insure one against 



44 EMINENT EUROPEANS 

any kind of risk. The premium quoted on Spain 
continuing a monarchy is very high indeed. Even 
higher is the rate of the life insurance policy paid 
for by the King of Spain. The risks of the trade, 
as he himself put it, are held against him. Bankers 
are reluctant to lend him money — his personal 
income is not very great, and a republican 
regime may repudiate the debts of a deposed 
king. 

Protective mimicry is a weapon of the weak, and 
kings are not above taking a leaf from the book of 
the squirrel whose fur turns white in winter. 
American dowagers at Paris and Philadelphia may 
be more royalist than the Duke of Orleans, but 
kings are sometimes less monarchistic than their 
office. The King of Italy has declared repeatedly 
that he was a Socialist. One of the chief republican 
leaders in Spain relates that King Alfonso once 
said to him: "If I were not King I would be a 
republican." According to certain malicious re- 
ports in the household of one of the major Euro- 
pean monarchs still undethroned rehearsals for a 
revolutionary emergency are held at intervals, like 
fire drills in a department store. And yet, with 
all its difficulties and extra risks, the king game 
still finds its amateurs. They are recruited from 
among the class which the English, with their di- 
vine snobbishness, describe as "minor royalties," 
princes of the blood whose status corresponds 
to that of the sons of second sons within the 
peerage. 



KING FERDINAND OF ROUMANIA 45 

When sovereigns write letters to their colleagues 
they address them as ''Mon tres clier frereJ" But 
this is a mere manner of speaking. There are no 
brotherly feelings lost between kings. They know 
one another little, love one another less, and they 
don't try to please one another as much as they 
might. In the unreal universe of the royal courts 
one of the important realities are the little pieces 
of ribbon. They are coveted not only by profes- 
sional courtiers, war profiteers, young visiters from 
the States and other climbers. Even the kings 
themselves adore them, that is, those bestowed by 
other kings, much as beautiful and idle women 
adore jewellery. One of Prince Ferdinand's great 
ambitions in life was to possess the two highest- 
prized pieces of ribbon in Europe, the Order of 
the Garter and the Order of the Golden Fleece, 
respectively distributed by the King of England 
and the King of Spain. Prince Ferdinand never 
received either. 

One of the most pronounced characteristics of a 
king is his extreme touchiness in the matter of rank. 
This is a trait seldom perceived by his subjects — 
just because they are subjects. But it is all the 
more apparent in the intercourse with his equals, 
other roj^alty. 

Poor King Ferdinand! He could never forget 
an experience he had as Crown Prince. At the 
funeral of King Edward VII. Prince Ferdinand 
followed the cortege in a brougham which he shared 
with the Crown Prince of Serbia. It was awful. 



46 EMINENT EUROPEANS 

A King of England is not buried every day, and 
Ferdinand had looked forward to this occasion. 
All his fun was spoiled. On that day his inferiority 
complex received its hallmark. 



1 



THE RISE OF ELEUTHERIOS 
VENIZELOS 



47 



THE RISE OF ELEUTHERIOS 
VENIZELOS 



Europeans whose memory reaches beyond the 
Great Divide of modern history, August 1, 1914, 
may remember a quaint word that greeted them 
with fair regularity at their breakfast on windy 
Spring mornings from Page 1 of their favourite 
newspaper. It was a composite word, a sort of 
hnguistic chimsera: comitadji. It was an extremely 
expressive word, for its very derivation and struc- 
ture were symbolic of its meaning. The first half 
of the word was, of course, the French conute. 
To this was tacked the Turkish suffix — dji, denot- 
ing connection or occupation. In other words, 
literally the comitadji was nothing more thrilling 
than a committeeman. Actually he was a hundred 
times more thrilling than a committeeman. For 
the committee which originally gave the name 
to the comitadji was the Supreme Committee of 
Macedonia and Adrianople, headed by the redoubt- 
able Bulgar, terror of European chancelleries, 
Boris Sarafov. Later the name was applied to 
the membership of any political organization of 

4 49 



50 EMINENT EUROPEANS 

Christians in European Turkey. Thus one spoke 
of Serb comitadjis, and the common term used in 
Continental newspaper parlance for members of 
the Greek irredentist society, the EtJinike Hetairia, 
too, was comitadji. 

Now this hybrid word covered an amphibious 
specimen of humankind. Of course, comitadjis of 
the lower ranks were plain peasants of the Balkan 
type, accustomed to transmute their plowshares 
into swords at a moment's notice. But their lead- 
ers, or at least some of them, were different. One 
day you would meet, in a Vienna or Paris cafe, a 
gentleman in a top hat, frock coat, white waist- 
coat and patent leather shoes. He would speak 
perfect French or German, as the case might be; 
he would have conventional manners, and perhaps 
the only unusual features about him would be a 
fiery black moustache of extra length and a no 
less fiery look in eyes of extra blackness. You 
would learn on inquiry that the distinguished gen- 
tleman was a lawyer or professor from Sofia or 
Filippopoli or Athens, and naturally you would 
refrain from examining his hip pocket, which as 
likely as not would contain a sixshooter. But then, 
three or four days later you might meet the same 
gentleman somewhere in the Macedonian hills, and 
you would be justified in not recognizing him at 
once. For now he would be dressed in a cotton 
shirt, wide breeches tucked into boots, a flat round 
cap, cartridge straps crossed on the chest, and a 
belt harbouring a couple of pistols and a yataghan 




©u. & u. 



ELEUTHERIOS VENIZELOS 



THE RISE OF VENIZELOS 51 

or two. You would, even more punctiliously than 
before, abstain from investigating his pockets, one 
of which might or might not contain a novel by 
Anatole France or a handy edition of Plato's 
dialogues. 

And this fierce-looking warrior would shoot a 
cigarette out of your mouth from a distance of 
ten yards with the same ease as the frock-coated 
lawyer of the Paris hotel lobby would have, a few 
days earlier, delivered a learned disquisition on 
the historic dispute detween the Bulgarian Exar- 
chate and the Oecumenical Patriarchate. Man is 
a creature of adaptation; and strange conditions 
produce strange variants. The noun comitadji, 
with its French front and Turkish rear, expressed 
the double-faced necessities of the life from which 
it sprang. 

The comitadji season usually began late in 
March or early in April. For twenty years prior 
to the Great War the news of the thawing of snow 
in the Balkan passes was a signal to editors in 
Vienna, Budapest, Berlin, Paris and London to 
bring up reinforcements to the telegraph desk ; for 
the comitadjis might go on the rampage any mo- 
ment, and there was no telHng what that might 
lead to. Comitadji field activities were classed 
under two principal headings. "Fighting for the 
liberty and rights of Christians" was one. This 
meant killing as many Turks as possible. "Read- 
justment of the ethnical balance" was the other. 
This meant, for the Bulgars, killing as many Serbs 



52 EMINENT EUROPEANS 

and Greeks as possible ; for the Serbs and Greeks, 
killing as many Bulgars as possible. 

All this, of course, was done by the Turkish 
half of the comitadji. The French half wrote 
articles and letters to Western newspapers, negoti- 
ated loans in more or less delicate ways, and gen- 
erally pulled such wires as were within reach. The 
two activities converged in causing headaches to 
the diplomatists of Europe. Theirs was a strenuous 
life, full of change and surprise and danger. To 
be a good comitadji one must be a person of versa- 
tile gifts and great endurance. To be a very good 
comitadji one must be a genius. Very good com- 
itadjis were accordingly rare. 



II 



In reading Mr. Robert Lansing's chapter on 
Eleutherios Venizelos in his volume "The Big Four 
and Others of the Peace Conference" one is struck 
by the notion that the word comitadji was perform- 
ing little antics in the subconscious section of the 
otherwise so orderly mind of America's Foreign 
Minister. To Mr. Lansing the personality of the 
Greek Premier was the most perturbing among all 
the strange phenomena of that unusual foregather- 
ing. And the worst of it was that he could not 
satisfactorily account to himself for the reasons of 
his disquietude. He knew that M. Venizelos was 
a great man — he was told so from all sides, and 
he had the evidence of his own eyes. He believed 



THE RISE OF VENIZELOS 53 

that "the views of M. Venizelos were given greater 
weight by the Big Four than those of any other 
single delegate at Paris." In consideration of 
which, and also of his own first-hand impressions, 
it seemed to him "almost heretical" to have a feel- 
ing of uncertainty as to M. Venizelos's real char- 
acter. Nevertheless Mr. Lansing, with his usual 
painstaking honesty, did not balk even at the moral 
risks of heresy, and refused to accept M. Venizelos 
at his current exchange value. 

The misgivings which thus drove Mr. Wilson's 
conscientious Secretary of State to the verge of a 
spiritual abyss, were two. First, he knew that M. 
Venizelos had been, in an earlier period of his career, 
"in repeated revolts against constituted authority 
and had lived as an outlaw in the mountains of 
Crete." This was bad enough; what was much 
worse was that M. Venizelos did not look the part. 
He was, 

... in appearance, in manner, and seemingly in temperament, 
the opposite of a typical revolutionist, especially of a Greek 
revolutionist whom popular imagination pictures as a swarthy, 
passionate brigand bristling with weapons. 

To an observer thus sharing the orthodox con- 
ception of what a man who had been in repeated 
revolts against constituted authority ought to look 
like, nothing could be more disappointing and per- 
plexing than the exterior of M. Venizelos. 

His appearance was, on the contrary, that of a sensitive 



54 EMINENT EUROPEANS 

student. He might have been a professor in some great 
European university spending his days in interpreting the 
unearthed treasures of Crete's prehistoric civilization or in 
poring over faded manuscripts containing the Hellenic 
philosophies of ancient days. Of medium height and with 
little superfluous flesh, with hair and beard white and thin 
suggesting premature old age, M. Venizelos was not distin- 
guished in form, feature or bearing. His complexion was 
ruddy, his eyes bright and clear, and his mouth gentle with 
generous mobile lips. He stooped in walking and his attitude 
in standing was shrinking, almost apologetic. One could 
hardly avoid the feeling that here was a man too modest, if 
not too timid, to be a great intellectual force in world affairs, 
too simple of soul to mingle in the jealousies and intrigues of 
European politics, and too idealistic in thought to pit his 
mind against the materialism and cleverness of the trained 
diplomats and political leaders assembled at Paris to draw 
a new map of Europe. 

Nor was this all. This mildness of appearance 
and manner, continues Mr. Lansing, was further 
enhanced by M. Venizelos's smile and voice. 

When he smiled, his whole face lighted up with benevo- 
lence and friendliness. His smile was his great charm, a 
charm that was emphasized by the soft and gentle tones 
of his voice. Everything about him seemed to diffuse good- 
ness. He appeared to be living in an atmosphere of virtuous 
thought and kindly purpose. 

His whole personality, concluded Mr. Lansing, 
contradicted this record. 

Mr. Lansing's doubts and apprehensions were 
not shared by his chief. President Wilson — so M. 
Venizelos's biographer, Mr. S. B. Chester notes on 



THE RISE OF VENIZELOS 55 

the authority of Secretary Josephus Daniels, "was 
said to have placed Venizelos first in point of per- 
sonal ability among all the delegates" at Paris. 
Mr. Wilson's admiration of the Greek statesman's 
brilliant qualities dated from their very first meet- 
ing, to which reference is made by Dr. Dillon in 
his "Inside Storj^ of the Peace Conference." 

M. Venizelos [writes Dr. Dillon] hastened to call on 
President Wilson as soon as that statesman arrived in Europe, 
and, to the surprise of many, the two remained a long time 
closeted together. "Whatever did you talk about.''" asked 
a colleague of the Greek Premier. "How did you keep Wilson 
interested in your national claims all that time.'' You must 
have — " "Oh no," interrupted the modest statesman. "I 
disposed of our claims succinctly enough. A matter of two 
minutes. Not more. The rest of the time I was getting him 
to give me the benefit of his familiarity with the subject of the 
League of Nations. T was greatly impressed by what he 
said. 

Notwithstanding the respect and sympathy which 
from the time of this conversation he conceived for 
the champion of the Hellenic cause, and with the 
expressions of which he was not sparing, Mr. Wil- 
son to the very last supported the Bulgarian claims 
against Greece. The President was noted for his 
happy frculty of dissociating personal likes and 
dislikes from considerations of State 

III 

In all fairness to Mr. Lansing it should be said 



56 EMINENT EUROPEANS 

that his perplexities were shared by not a few. 
The character of Greece's Prime Minister and 
quasi-dictator was, and has remained, if not an 
enigma, at any rate a controversial subject. 
Largely, there were in the West of Europe three 
groups, or rather layers, of opinion concerning him, 
graded according to information and sophistica- 
tion, and decreasing proportionately. 

In Allied lands the large majority of newspaper 
readers naturally swallowed what Mr. Lansing 
would call the orthodox view, promulgated officially 
and semi-officially by the newspapers and the in- 
numerable information bureaus and other propa- 
ganda agencies. According to this version, Veni- 
zelos was perfection itself, one of the great men 
of the period, the saviour of his country. 

As the one criterion by which this judgment was 
arrived at was obviously the usefulness of M. Veni- 
zelos for the military purposes of the Allies, a 
goodly section of liberal opinion both in England 
and America was anti-Venizelist, holding that the 
Greek statesman was a militarist and imperialist, 
an exceedingly clever but also exceedingly un- 
scrupulous politician, willing though hardly blind 
tool of the Entente. This "heterodoxy" was sub- 
stantially reinforced by the high-handed methods 
employed by the Allies to curb Constantine. One 
weakness of liberals is their a priori sympathy for 
the under dog, quite frequently uninquisitive as to 
whether the dog in question deserved his nether 
position or not, and what he would do should he 



THE RISE OF VENIZELOS 57 

get uppermost. Thus there arose among British 
Liberals and Labourites, and a certain section of 
American intellectuals a tender regard for Con- 
stantine unwarranted, in the eyes of the initiate, 
by his record, and explicable only as a reaction to 
too much governmental affection for Constantine's 
antagonist. 

The third, and smallest group consisted mostly 
of officials and specialists who had opportunity 
either to come into personal contact with the Greek 
Premier, or else to study his character and activi- 
ties from close range. Some of these men had ap- 
proached him with an open-minded expectancy not 
entirely untinged by diffidence, determined partly 
by the reasons just dissected, and partly by a preju- 
dice somewhat akin to Mr. Lansing's apprehen- 
sions. In all honesty it must be stated that there 
existed in the West a distrust of Greece in general 
and of Greek politicians in particular, a distrust 
which broad-minded and cultivated Greeks de- 
plored, but could not, in their heart of hearts con- 
demn as altogether unjustified. 

M. Venizelos conquered this distrust. There were 
in him, below the layer of his most obvious quali- 
ties, — his eloquence, his tremendous intellectual 
elan, his somewhat cool sweetness of temper, and 
his unswerving directness of purpose, — qualities 
evoking admiration rather than affection, — a cer- 
tain simplicity, an unusual moderation — infallible 
mark of the imaginative — and an indifference to 
personal advantage that inevitably struck those who 



58 EMINENT EUROPEANS 

grew familiar with him or his record. If these 
traits, labelled by Mr. Lansing as Venizelos's ideal- 
ism, and distrusted by him as disingenuous, con- 
stituted a mask, it was a mask that fitted perfectly 
and behind which no one ever peered. If this ideal- 
ism was not genuine, it was at any rate never 
betrayed. 



IV 



What was the record of this remarkable man 
which, in Mr. Lansing's wistful words, so contra- 
dicted his personality? 

Eleutherios Venizelos was born at Canea, in 
Crete, on August 23, 1864. His father was a well- 
to-do merchant who had suffered persecution for 
his Greek patriotism from the Turkish rulers of the 
island. His advent was ushered in by a cycle of 
legends — how many invented ex post facto it is 
impossible now to tell. One modestly relates how 
little Venizelos was born in a cattle-shed, in ful- 
filment of his mother's vow to the Virgin. Accord- 
ing to another his mother had dedicated him to St. 
Eleutherios, the patron, not of liberty, but of de- 
livery. A third tells us that the priest who bap- 
tized him said: "I baptize thee Eleutherios, for 
thou shalt deliver Crete from the Turkish yoke." 

A fourth story, not the least interesting one, is 
authentic. Three children of his parents had died 
before he was born. So the couple decided to fol- 
low with him the one safe procedure, which, ac- 



THE RISE OF VENIZELOS 59 

cording to Cretan belief, consisted in pretending 
that little Eleutherios was a foundling. He was, 
shortly after his birth, "deposited comfortably on 
dry leaves outside of his father's house," and duly 
found by a friend of the family who "happened" 
to pass by. The friend carried the infant into the 
house and "persuaded" M. and Mme. Venizelos 
to adopt him. No more appropriate debut could 
be imagined for one destined to become a past mas- 
ter in the fine art of diplomatic expediency. 

To be sure, the story carries a slight suggestion 
of the Moses myth. That Venizelos is a reincar- 
nation of the sun-god is not on record, but one 
cannot vouch for the rumours that will circulate 
a thousand years hence. Besides, there is some- 
thing just, or almost, as good. M. Caclamanos, 
Greek Minister to the Court of St. James, relates 
that when in 1899 M. Clemenceau returned from a 
visit to Greece he told the Comtesse de Noailles that 
he had found a man — one M. Venizelos — or was 
it Venezuelos? — of whom "the whole of Europe 
will be speaking in a few years." 

Old M. Venizelos was a good Greek. But he 
also was a wise father and a shrewd merchant. He 
gave his son such education as the facilities of 
Canea afforded. When these were exhausted he 
wanted him to enter the ancestral firm. Young 
Venizelos said he preferred to continue his studies 
at Athens. But the father would not hear of it. 
For a Cretan Greek it would never do to have too 
much education. Too much education gave one 



60 EMINENT EUROPEANS 

cravings that one could not fulfill, pretences that 
one could not live up to. It made one restless. 
Cretans who went to Athens for an education 
usually ended by becoming revolutionists. That 
was bad both for them and their families. The 
place of a well-to-do young Cretan was in the home. 
Of course, Turkish rule was a nuisance and a dis- 
grace and all that. But it had its good side ; for the 
Turks cared little about trade, and knew less. If 
one only kept one's peace and paid one's taxes one 
was allowed to thrive and prosper. 

A bitter dispute between father and son ensued. 
It was settled by the intercession of a friend, M. 
Zygomalas, the Greek Consul at Canea. Zygoma- 
las recognized the unusual stuff that was in young 
Venizelos, and induced the father to allow him to 
go to the University of Athens. Young Venizelos 
went, and in due course of time returned with the 
degree of LL.D., and set up to practice the law at 
the Cretan capital. 

He did not remain long at it. Old M. Venizelos 
was a wise man. In Crete, like in other countries, 
the law is the jumping-off board to politics for the 
ambitious. But in Crete, unlike lands of less 
troubled historic climes, being a politician was 
merely an incidental phase to a larger, more excit- 
ing and more dangerous game: that of revolution. 

Young Venizelos had no illusions. Neither had 
he fears. From the outset he had seen his road 
clearly. He knew that he was sent to bring not 
peace, but a sword — for there could be no peace 



THE RISE OF VENIZELOS 61 

in Crete as long as the Turks remained there. 
There wasn't much of a choice. 

I had to decide [he said later] whether I would be a lawyer 
by profession and a revolutionary at intervals, or a revolu- 
tionary by profession and a lawyer at intervals. 

He chose the profession of a revolutionary. 



It was in the seventeenth century that Crete, 
ancient land of Minos, cradle of ^gean civiliza- 
tion, had come, after a rather chequered past under 
Byzantine, Latin and Venetian domination, under 
the yoke of the Turk. A number of the natives 
adopted Islam in order to avoid persecution; there 
was some very slight Turkish military coloniza- 
tion; but the majority of the population remained 
Greek in sentiment and Orthodox in religion, and 
even the Moslem converts retained their Greek lan- 
guage. In the second half of the nineteenth cen- 
tury the Christian majority gained rapidly. By 
1900 the Moslems shrank to a mere handful. 

Between 1821 and '27 Crete participated in the 
Greek insurrection, but when in 1830 Greece 
achieved independence, the Protecting Powers, 
England, France and Russia, decided with that 
half-heartedness which was to remain the curse of 
Near Eastern politics for another eighty years, that 
the largest and most important of the Greek islands 
should remain under Turkish rule. 



62 EMINENT EUROPEANS 

Until 1852, under the exceptionally decent and 
enlightened rule of Mustapha Pasha, an Albanian 
appointed from Egypt by Mehmet Ali, Crete en- 
joyed comparative quiet and prosperity. But in 
1852 Mustapha Pasha was rewarded by promotion 
to Grand Vizier. Four years later a rebellion 
broke out, and thenceforth until 1912 the history of 
Crete is a series of revolts tempered by intermittent 
truces. These outbreaks usually culminated in a 
declaration — not of independence, but of union with 
the Kingdom of Greece — "Mother Greece" the 
Cretans called her ; and more than once the Cretans 
would have had their way but for the interference 
of the Protecting Powers, so called. 

The record of the Powers in the Cretan Question 
forms one of the stupidest and meanest chapters 
in that book of stupidity and meanness, nineteenth 
century diplomatic annals. For any one not utterly 
devoid of vision and of a sense of fair play, it must 
have been evident that the Cretan problem admitted 
of but one lasting solution, and that was union with 
Greece, ardently desired by a substantial majoritj^ 
of the natives. But the doctors of Europe decided 
that the Sick Man was to be preserved on his sick- 
bed, and while his estate was suffered to go to the 
dogs, his dependents were expected to pay the bills 
of physician and apothecary, not to mention the 
upkeep of the policemen needed to exact payment. 

It is unnecessary here to inquire into the reasons ; 
in ultimate analysis there weren't any, for the 
motives of the Great Powers cannot be dignified 



THE RISE OF VENIZELOS 63 

by that name. About the nearest approach to an 
excuse for not allowing Crete to join Greece was 
that the Moslem minority needed protection; 
though why the powers should have preferred to 
"protect" the Christian majority under Turkish 
government to safeguarding the Moslem minority 
under a Greek administration no one not born and 
bred a diplomatist can fathom. 

Details of the endless squabbles and fights can- 
not be entered here. But there was a side-issue 
that mirrored the main problem in its full glory, 
even as the tiniest dewdrop mirrors the mighty sun. 
Since the days of Pasiphae Crete has been the home 
of strange yearnings ; and in the second half of the 
nineteenth century, and the first decade of the twen- 
tieth, the governing passion of Cretans was for not 
possessing a flag of their own. They said they 
were Greeks, and the blue flag of Greece with its 
white St. George's Cross was good enough for 
them. But the Protecting Powers, ever intent on 
protecting the Cretans against themselves, insisted 
that if the islanders objected to the Crescent and 
Star, they must have a flag of their own. 

Accordingly, after much squabble and some ex- 
periment, a Cretan flag was devised — a white cross 
on a blue field, with a white star on a red field in 
the canton. One can imagine the four Ambassadors 
(at this time Italy had joined the Protectors) 
seated around a table, contemplating the design 
just finished, and beaming upon one another in 
silent congratulation over their ingenuity and tact. 



64 EMINENT EUROPEANS 

For not only were the colours of the flag borrowed 
from the Greek and Turkish ensigns respectively, 
with even the numeric proportion of Christians and 
Moslems expressed in the relation of blue and red, 
but the Christians could rejoice in having no cres- 
cent to wave over their heads, and the Moslems in 
having the star. 

It was a very pretty flag, and in a way it was 
a perfect solution. Its only drawback was that it 
did not solve anything. For the Cretan Greeks 
refused to swallow, as it were, the new flag. The 
moment the Admirals and Consuls, representatives 
of the might and majesty of the European concert, 
looked the other way, down went the Cretan em- 
blem on the flagstaffs of the public buildings at 
Canea, and up went the standard of Greece. After 
a while the Admirals discovered in horror what had 
happened, and issued orders to strike the Greek 
flag and rehoist the Cretan. Sometimes the orders 
were obeyed. At other times they were not. In the 
latter case the "protecting" fleets of Europe fired 
a few shots at the "rebels," and a few Cretans died, 
and the Greek flag went down, and a good time 
was had by all, including the Grand Vizier at Con- 
stantinople, and the editors in Vienna and Berlin, 
who for the day were spared the trouble of digging 
up topics for special articles from Meyer's Con- 
versationslexicon. 

And in the meantime Turkish tyranny and cor- 
ruption and sloth continued under the protection 
of the naval guns of His Britannic Majesty and 



THE RISE OF VENIZELOS 65 

the French Republic, not to mention the Czar of 
all the Russians and the King of Italy. Occasion- 
ally — and the intervals tended to grow shorter — 
there were massacres of Cretan Christians by 
Cretan Moslems, immediately followed by massa- 
cres of Cretan Moslems by Cretan Christians, both 
followed by ambassadorial luncheon discussions, 
and a note or two, and an trade or two, and a dozen 
editorials in European newspapers, solemnly stat- 
ing that a final settlement of the Cretan Question 
is more desirable and also further off than ever. 



VI 



In 1896 there was a new insurrection. The 
Etknike Hetairia of Greece, the organization of 
the irredentists, smuggled arms and supplies to the 
rebels; the Greek Colonel Vassos, a brave and re- 
sourceful soldier, landed at the head of a semi- 
official expeditionary force. In February, 1897, 
Canea was set on fire by the Moslems. It was 
during that conflagration, says Mr. Chester with 
an ominousness he seems to be unaware of, that 
Venizelos rose to the front rank of Cretan leaders. 

By May the Cretan events precipitated war be- 
tween Greece and Turkey. It was a short war — 
the Greeks were utterly beaten in a month and a 
day, and sued for peace. But the Cretan revolt 
continued for a few months longer, although Col- 
onel Vassos and his little army had been recalled to 
the mainland to serve with the Greek army. 



66 EMINENT EUROPEANS 

For the Cretan insurgents the campaign meant 
fighting not only the Turkish regulars and their 
native Moslem confederates, but also the troops of 
the "protecting" Powers garrisoned in Crete. Veni- 
zelos, the young lawyer of Canea, was at war with 
Europe. When in 1916 Venizelos, as head of his 
home-made Salonica government, declared war on 
the Central Powers there were those who could not 
help perceiving the humour of the situation and 
smiled at such exuberance of private enterprise. 
For Venizelos it was vieuoj jeu; for as early as 
1896-'97, and later in 1905, he had been fighting 
England, France, Russia and Italy — not to men- 
tion Turkey. It was a mere accident that he did 
not meet with his death when the Protectors of 
Crete shelled his headquarters at Akrotiri. 

All the qualities which in his later career called 
forth such admiration were already in evidence 
during the Akrotiri rebellion ; his reasoned, unemo- 
tional eloquence, his sangfroid, above all, his mod- 
eration — most unusual trait in a revolutionist on 
field duty. A British naval officer who was sent to 
negotiate with the rebels was struck by nothing so 
much as by the respectability of their leader. He 
described Venizelos as a "quiet, reasonable young 
man" who fully realized the predicament of the 
Powers. 

"Go slow with the Porte," Venizelos said. "Make a feint 
of coercing us if you have to — I shall restrain my men." 

"Why don't you trust us implicitly.''" countered the British 
representative, "instead of forcing our hand.''" 



THE RISE OF VENIZELOS 67 

Venizelos's answer is the classic statement of 
the case of Near East Christians against the 
Powers of Europe. 

"The European policy," he said, "is invariably the mainten- 
ance of the status quo, and you will do nothing for the sub- 
ject races unless we, by taking the initiative, make you 
realize that helping us against the Turks is the lesser of the 
evils." 

"Damn it, the beggar is right !" wrote the Englishman.* 

The story of the Akrotiri revolt condenses in a 
strangely graphic way Venizelos's subsequent ca- 
reer. It presents his tendency to rise, skyrocket- 
like, to sudden splendour, and vanish again in utter 
darkness. In August, 1897, he was elected Presi- 
dent of the Insurrectionary Assembly. He was 
uncompromisingly in favour of union with Greece ; 
but things did not go well with the revolutionists, 
and by one of those lightning reversals of senti- 
ment which seem to be a feature of Greek politics, 
the party opposing outright annexation and con- 
tent with autonomy under Turkish suzerainty 
swelled into a majority overnight. Venizelos was 
not only forced to resign from the chair, but was 
formally excluded from the Assembly. 

Now in Western Europe a blow like that would 
be enough to kill a politician, figuratively. In the 
primitive, though not unsophisticated, Near East, 
where armed force is not the symbol and ultima 

• Quoted by Dr. Herbert Adams Gibbona. 



68 EMINENT EUROPEANS 

ratio^ but the immediate executor of political power, 
it is almost enough to kill a politician bodily. 

Eleutherios Venizelos [wrote Biliotti, the British Consul- 
General at Canea, to Constantinople], whose appointment as 
President has been cancelled by the General Assembly, and 
his partisans, twelve in number, were kept prisoners during 
eight hours in a house at Archanes, which the mob threatened 
to set fire to, and they were stoned nearly everywhere during 
their twelve days' return journey to Akrotiri. 

And Admiral Harris, the British naval officer in 
command, reported that Venizelos "narrowly es- 
caped being killed by the populace." The Admi- 
ral's report is noteworthy because it brings into 
relief a highly significant trait of Venizelian strat- 
egy. The Admiral accuses Venizelos and his an- 
nexationist friends of secretly encouraging the 
Turks to remain on the island, as autonomy, by 
curing the worst evils, would delay union with 
Greece, while continuation of the Turkish tyranny 
would hasten that event. 

The insurrection, like the Greek campaign on 
the mainland, ended in defeat. Nevertheless Crete 
— and here for once the Protecting Powers deserve 
some credit — emerged with important gains. Union 
with Greece, voted as a matter of routine by the 
Assembly, was of course nullified; but autonomy 
was granted, and Prince George, second son of the 
King of the Hellenes, was appointed High Com- 
missioner under Ottoman suzerainty. The popula- 
tion clamoured for the withdrawal of the Turkish 



THE RISE OF VENIZELOS 69 

troops. Fulfilment of this wish might have taken 
some time, had not the Moslem hotheads of Canea 
committed the indiscretion of massacring a hand- 
ful of British bluejackets. Thereupon the Powers 
ordered the Porte to evacuate the island, and the 
last of the Turkish soldiery embarked in November. 



VII 



Venizelos was defeated, for the first time in his 
life — not for the last. Within a year he was on 
his feet again. His career resembles that of the 
Greek flag on Crete. He could not be kept down 
for any length of time. A few months passed, and 
he was elected one of the Executive Committee of 
five, in charge pending the arrival of Prince 
George. A little later the new High Commissioner 
appointed him one of his seven Councillors — Min- 
isters of State in everything save title. Venizelos 
dominated the Council. Although he held the port- 
folio of justice, he was practically Foreign Min- 
ister, and negotiated with the Powers concerning 
domestic reform and financial assistance. 

His relations with the Prince were strained from 
the first. George was inexperienced — he was 
haughty, rash and vain, self-willed and officious. 
In his first interview with M. Sphakianakis, ven- 
erable dean of Cretan leaders, the Prince found it 
opportune to announce that he had the blood of 
Peter the Great in his veins. 

"I hope that your Highness will at least spare us 



70 EMINENT EUROPEANS 

the executions," replied M. Sphakianakis in the 
suavest tones. 

According to Mr. Chester, Prince George com- 
bined the appetite for intrigue with a marked lack 
of talent for it. He was constantly touring the 
European courts — he was closely related to the 
Kings of England and Denmark, and to the Czar. 
The expenses were borne by the Cretan people. 
But it was all for their good, said the Prince. He 
was sure he would achieve results by virtue of his 
family connections. 

Before long the Prince's administration degen- 
erated into a petty tyranny hardly less odious than 
that of the Turkish valis of old. Oppression, chi- 
canery, favouritism, corruption were rampant. In 
1901 Venizelos was dismissed. He at once took 
the lead of the opposition in the Assembly. 

During the following four years Prince George's 
rule assumed more and more the character of a 
minor brand of White Terror. Cretans despaired ; 
public opinion in Greece was scandalized; never- 
theless the "family connections" set through the 
renewal of the Prince's mandate for another term. 
The opposition, though teased and terrorized in a 
hundred ways, limited itself to parliamentary chan- 
nels. But in March, 1905, the news was flashed 
across Europe that M. Venizelos, at the head of a 
little army, had taken to the hills. 

This time it was not against the Turks. There 
were no more Turks left in the island. It was 
Venizelos vs. the House of Gliicksburg — prelim- 



THE RISE OF VENIZELOS 71 

inary skirmish of a much more famous battle to 
come. Venizelos charged that Prince George had 
overridden his mandate, nullified the constitution, 
and had become the leader of a political party. 

The insurrection of 1905 is known as that of 
Therisso. There was the usual squabbling, some 
desultory fighting between insurgents on the one 
hand and international troops on the other. There 
was the usual declaration of union with Greece, first 
by the insurgents, then by the Assembly at Canea, 
under the very nose of the Prince and the European 
admirals. Up went the Greek flag — down it went 
again. The rebels needed money. Venizelos tried 
to borrow 100,000 francs in Greece. He failed. 

His ascendency over his countrymen was now 
unquestioned and unassailable. His statesmanship 
again evoked admiring comment from his oppon- 
ents, the international agents. The French Consul- 
General, like the British naval officer eight years 
ago, was struck, above all, by his moderation. M. 
Maurouard noted in one of his dispatches that in a 
speech made at Therisso before the insurgents 
"M. Venizelos was not responsible for a single 
violent remark." 

Violent remarks were left to the exclusive use of 
Prince George, who in various communications ad- 
dressed to the European chancelleries and in his 
statements to the press spoke with extreme bitter- 
ness of the mis- and malfeasances of M. Venizelos, 
attributed his insurgency to vanity and thwarted 
ambition, protested his own innocence, and even 



72 EMINENT EUROPEANS 

accused some of the Consuls and international 
military officers of collusion with the rebels. 

But then, the Prince's patience was sorely tried. 
His very Ministers deserted him, and joined the 
insurgents. The Assembly at Canea demonstrated 
its loyalty by adopting a series of reforms, provid- 
ing for restrictions of the High Commissioner's 
prerogative, extending the suffrage, and abolishing 
press censorship — all carefully copied from the bill 
of grievances with which the insurgents had taken 
the field. 

By November the Therisso revolt collapsed. 
Venizelos and his supporters, having obtained 
amnesty from the representatives of the Powers, 
surrendered their arms. 

Once more Venizelos was knocked out. Once 
more he fell — upwards. Within a few months he 
was back at his old job negotiating with the Powers 
for additional reforms. Within a year his opponent, 
Prince George, descendant of Peter the Great and 
cousin to half the monarchs of Europe, found it 
advisable to board a Greek warship in a hurry and 
with omission of music and flowers. He was sup- 
planted by M. Zaimis, an experienced and decent 
politician, nominated with European authority by 
the King of Greece. 

M. Zaimis found in Venizelos a willing co- 
operator. By the middle of 1909 the situation was 
consolidated to such extent that the Powers agreed 
to withdraw their troops from the island. Venizelos, 
says his biographer, was sufficiently satisfied to 



THE RISE OF VENIZELOS 73 

make an eloquent speech in honour of the departing 
internationals. Lack of a sense of humour was 
never one of the defects of Venizelos's qualities. 

With the removal of the European troops Crete 
was, in everything but name, a part of Greece. 
Henceforth justice was administered, decrees were 
promulgated, in the name of the King of the Helle- 
nes. Greek officers trained and commanded the 
gendarmerie. Formally, however, the union was 
not proclaimed until the outbreak of the Balkan 
war in 1912, and even then the Powers withheld for 
another eight months their recognition of a status 
that had obtained for five years. 

There is a story of the New York Jew who 
wandered into a delicatessen store, and, pointing to 
a juicy ham, demanded a pound of "that cheese." 
"I beg your pardon," said the dispenser of viands, 
"that is ham, not cheese." "Are you here to wait on 
me or to argue with me?" snapped the customer. 
"I say I want a pound of that cheese/' He got it. 
One of the great traditions of European statecraft 
was to call a de facto ham a de iure cheese, whenever 
required by its ritual. 

VIII 

By 1909 Venizelos achieved everything there was 
to be achieved in his native island. Crete, like 
Macedon for Alexander, had grown too narrow for 
him. But the wider opportunity was already in the 
offing. 

On January 10, 1910, Venizelos landed at 



74 EMINENT EUROPEANS 

Piraeus. He was forty-six years old. For the next 
ten years, remarks his biographer, the story of 
Venizelos is the history of Greece. 

He was invited tj^act as official peacemaker in the 
dispute between the Military League and King 
George. The dispute was the aftermath of nothing 
less than a coup d'etat. Half a year earlier the 
officers who had formed the League marched out 
to Goudi Hill, near Athens, encamped there and 
sent an ultimatum to Premier Rallis. The ulti- 
matum demanded reforms in military and civil 
administration. Above all, it demanded the re- 
signation of the Crown Prince Constantine as Com- 
mander-in-Chief, and the removal of his brothers 
from the army. 

Princes of the Blood are seldom popular in 
armies. They are too lively a reminder of the un- 
equal distribution of duties and rewards in this 
world. The officers' corps of a European army is 
like a club. However snobbish and narrowly ex- 
clusive it may appear to the undesired outsider, 
usually full equality reigns within. Now in the 
democracy, genuine though restricted, of an offi- 
cers' corps Princes of the Blood, as a rule, con- 
stitute an anomaly of insufferable prerogative. In 
peace time they are a nuisance; in war they may 
amount to a positive danger. Eugene of Savoy, 
the ablest general that ever served the Hapsburgs, 
himself a Prince, never accepted a command with- 
out stipulating that Archdukes would be strictly 
kept at home. 



THE RISE OF VENIZELOS 75 

The Greek Princes were numerous. They came 
from an unusually overbearing breed. Routine 
promotion was slow. The country was poor. Pay 
cheques for the officers were not infrequently a few 
weeks behindhand. The cases of champagne for the 
Princes were always on time. Some of the officers 
were patriots ; others may have been firebrands ; the 
majority were just plain human beings with a griev- 
ance. They discovered certain delicious secrets, 
well known to carpenters and stonemasons, but as 
a rule without the scope of the more aristocratic 
professions. They formed a trade union and struck. 
They established strike headquarters on Mount 
Goudi. Unfortunately for their employer, the 
government, it was impossible to send the army 
against them ; for in this case the strikers happened 
to be the army. 

The effect of the officers' ultimatum was over- 
whelming. M. Rallis resigned almost before he had 
read it to the end. The Princes, including the 
Commander-in-Chief, followed suit. M. Dragoumis 
was named Premier at the head of what on the 
continent is called a cabinet d'affaires. He had the 
backing of the Military League. 

At the court consternation reigned. The King 
feared revolution. Uncertainty followed the first 
shock ; for the coup did not prove a settlement. The 
officers had talked politics for years — Greeks hardly 
ever do anything else. But now the officers tasted 
acting politics, and found it good. Soon their saner 
leaders perceived that measures to prevent trees 



76 EMINENT EUROPEANS 

from growing to the sky were in order. There was 
one man, and one only, in the Hellenic world to 
handle the situation. The leaders of the Military 
League sent a delegation to Crete to fetch 
Venizelos. 

Venizelos arrived, and called on the King with 
the plein pouvoir of the officers. King George had 
no reason to like the man who had spoiled his 
son's sojourn in Crete so effectively. This man 
now came as the ambassador of rebels. "I hope," 
said King George to a friend "that M. Veni- 
zelos will soon be hanged from the mast of a 
battleship." 

The pious wish was not fulfilled, and before long 
the King had occasion to mend his opinion. The 
devil is never so black as he is painted — not even a 
Cretan devil. M. Venizelos brought with him to 
Athens the gift that had earned him in Crete the 
respect and admiration of the European representa- 
tives. It was moderation. If he was a revolu- 
tionary adventurer, his manner strangely resembled 
that of a conservative statesman. If he was a 
gambler, he gambled with such perspicacity that the 
game was undistinguishable from legitimate busi- 
ness. He knew that if you only give Time a chance 
it will work for you. He possessed one of the rarest 
as well as most effective faculties — mastery of the 
fine art of waiting. To be able to sit still with a 
nonchalant dignity; not to shoot until you see the 
whites of Opportunity's eyes, is the key to success 
in diplomacy and war, also in that combination 



THE RISE OF VENIZELOS 77 

of diplomacy and war, love. Marlborough had 
that faculty, and Cavour; so did Casanova. It is 
a gift indispensable to snipers — and to makers of 
history. 

Venizelos succeeded in appeasing the old King. 
A revolutionary who has mended his ways makes 
the best minister, a French statesman once re- 
marked. The King was scared out of his wits by 
the prospect of a National Assembly, demanded by 
the Military League and by Venizelos. The King, 
as amateur Freudians would say, had a complex on 
National Assemblies. He had seen one in his youth. 
It was the foregathering which deposed his prede- 
cessor, Otto of Bavaria, and set him on the throne 
of Greece. 

King George, unlike his sons, was a very astute 
diplomatist. But he was no match for Venizelos. 
In the end the Cretan had his way. His winning 
move was a hravoure in the best Venizelian manner. 
He told the King that on the day when the National 
Assembly convened the Military League would be 
dissolved. Never has a single stroke killed two 
flies more thoroughly. Venizelos won the King's 
heart. He also got rid of the Military League. The 
Cretan, too, had a good memory. He remembered 
the fate of Colonel Lapathiotis, the officer whom the 
League had set up as Minister of War in August 
and pulled down in December for being too in- 
dependent in his appointments. "Sometimes a dead 
ally beats a dozen live enemies," says a Malay 
proverb. 



78 EMINENT EUROPEANS 

IX 

In October, 1910, Venizelos was appointed 
Premier. He had a very substantial majority in 
the National Assembly, and he ran the business with 
a smooth efficiency that was a novelty at Athens. 
He immediately started general housecleaning — 
reorganization of home government, finances, army, 
navy. And he began to lay the foundations of that 
foreign policy which culminated in the two victori- 
ous wars of 1912 and '13. 

Within half a year of his appointment Venizelos 
sprang a surprise. He rehabilitated the Crown 
Prince Constantine. In the first transaction that 
brought these two men together Venizelos played 
the role of Santa Claus and guardian angel com- 
bined. 

Constantine's first appearance before European 
publicity was in the ill-starred war of 1897, in which 
he held a command. A chronicler, commenting on 
his qualifications for the post, remarks that Con- 
stantine's cuisine was the best prepared sector of 
the Greek front. Fortunately for Greece, the war 
was over in thirty days and one. Returning home 
from a lost war belongs with the less pleasant 
features of a Prince's routine. Napoleon III, him- 
self an expert, declared with envy that Francis 
Joseph was the only monarch in Europe whom his 
people cheered after a defeat in the field. The 
campaign of 1897 did not make Constantine very 
popular in Greece. 



THE RISE OF VENIZELOS 79 

In 1909 Constantine, yielding to the ultimatum 
of the Military League, resigned from the post of 
Commander-in-Chief and went to Berlin to find 
solace. 

What could be Venizelos's motive in restoring 
Constantine to good standing in the army? The 
answer, though a complex one, may be guessed at. 
Constantine was unpopular with the officers, who 
despite the disbandment of the Military League 
still formed Venizelos's mainstay. The Premier 
incurred grave risks in championing the Crown 
Prince. But Constantine was not nearly so un- 
popular with the officers as Venizelos was with the 
Elder Statesmen of Athens. These politicians had 
been efficient only in running the machine of their 
own ascendency. Venizelos wrecked that machine. 
The politicians perceived that as long as he stayed 
among them the machine could not be repaired; 
also, that he had come to stay. This provincial 
shyster — this Highlander who tucked his trousers 
into his boots — this professional rebel — this ex-com- 
itadji — presumed to beat them at their own game. 
The politicians despised him as a backwoods- 
man and a parvenu; they hated him as the Anti- 
Christ. 

Did Venizelos need an ally ? With all his faults, 
Constantine had his good qualities. He was a good 
fellow, in his way; he was not over-intelligent. 
Venizelos discerned in him the makings of a splen- 
did figure-head. The first rumblings of the coming 
Balkan war were just growing audible. Veni- 



80 EMINENT EUROPEANS 

zelos, coldest-blooded of men, was generous not so 
much by impulse as by reasoned conviction. 
When the Archbishop of Canea, prompted by 
Prince George, excommunicated him as the leader 
of the Therisso rebellion, he countered the move 
by advising the people of Crete to respect and obey 
the church. What could the Archbishop answer to 
that? 

He saw that sooner or later he would have to 
deal with the heir to the throne — why not disarm 
him before he even had a chance to arm himself? 

Venizelos trusted his own ability to restrain the 
undue growth of trees toward the sky. He in- 
troduced a bill creating the post of Inspector- 
General of the army. The bill was passed. 
Constantine was appointed. 

The two Balkan wars were fought, and the peace 
of Bucarest was concluded. It was in the course of 
the negotiations of the London treaty, preliminary 
to the second war, that Venizelos was recognized as 
a star of the first magnitude on the firmament of 
European politics. To the Great Powers Venizelos 
was the conference. M. Clemenceau's prediction 
was fulfilled. 

It was in October, 1910, on the eve of his appoint- 
ment to Premier, that Venizelos said to King 
George : 

If your Majesty consents to leave me full liberty of action 
and to ratify my program, I promise to present you in five 
years with a renovated Greece, capable of inspiring respect 
and of supporting her rights. 



THE RISE OF VENIZELOS 81 

Moderation of statement was always a dominant 
trait in Venizelos. He promised to the King a re- 
novated Greece in five years. Within three he 
presented with a doubled Greece, not George him- 
self, for the old King had been assassinated at 
Salonica, but his son and successor, Constantine. 

Yet there was one thing that the Cretan states- 
man who had fought four Great Powers and 
survived it, who within a year brought two wars to 
triumphant conclusion, who even managed to over- 
come the camarilla of the Elder Statesmen of 
Athens, could not conquer. It was the inborn dif- 
fidence of the House of Gliicksburg. Old King 
George had said to M. Caclamanos: "Venizelos is 
by far the ablest statesman Greece has produced 
during my reign." Nevertheless — or shall I say 
consequently? — the King summoned his old con- 
fidant, M. Streit, then Greek Minister in Vienna, 
to enter Venizelos's cabinet. "M. Venizelos will 
bear watching," said the King. 

There never was any love lost between Eleu- 
therios Venizelos and the House of Schleswig- 
Holstein-Sonderburg-Gliicksburg. 



CONSTANTINE AND THE FALL 
OF VENIZELOS 



CONSTANTINE AND THE FALL 
OF VENIZELOS 



Were the making of history entrusted to writers 
of motion picture scenarios, they could not devise 
a more dramatic, even melodramatic, contrast than 
that separating the antagonists in the duel which 
was destined to be Greece's contribution to the 
annals of the Great War. Constantine, scion of a 
North German princely house, huge, fair, sanguine, 
shrewd though not too intelligent, bellicose and 
proud, with a joviality only too often swept away 
by flashes of temper, amiable on the surface, cruel 
and self-centered at bottom, wilful rather than 
strong-willed, is the typical aristocrat — if we accept 
the blond beast as a definition of aristocracy. Veni- 
zelos, the thoroughbred Levantine, small, wiry, 
undistinguished of feature, as supple physically as 
mentally, with a lightning intellect, a will like a 
Damascene blade, at once lithe and ruthless, a man- 
ner of extreme suavity screening a cold glow of 
passion, is the ideal of the man risen from the people 
— but a people whose plebeian tradition is two thou- 
sand years older than the heritage of the proudest 
Northern aristocracy. 

85 



86 EMINENT EUROPEANS 

This contrast is in no wise weakened by the para- 
dox that temperamentally Constantine is the 
more democratic of the two. In Europe a certain 
spirit of good fellowship, the quality which Ameri- 
cans describe as being a good mixer, is more often 
found in the politician of aristocratic antecedents 
than in the leader of democracy; for, while the 
former, on account of his independence, can afford 
to be a democrat, in the latter years of solitary 
struggle engender an intellectual contempt for the 
human material that is only too apt to be reflected 
in outward behaviour as aloofness. Indeed, this 
aloofness was ever one of Venizelos's most marked 
characteristics — and one which, as both his enemies 
and friends agree, contributed in no mean degree to 
his phenomenal fall. 

No one is likely to challenge the definition of 
Constantine as an aristocratic type. After all, that 
type has its variants no less than democracy. Gen- 
eral Gordon was an aristocratic type — so was 
George Gordon, Lord Byron; so are the Duke of 
Northumberland and Lord Robert Cecil. The 
range is wide enough. 

But there will be those who object to the descrip- 
tion of M. Venizelos as a leader of democracy. Is 
not his record, these protestants will point out, one 
of militant imperialism, of exclusive nationalism? 
True enough. The democracy of which M. Veni- 
zelos is a leader and a prototype is the democracy, 
not of the Russian, but of the French revolution; 
and the democracy of the French revolution was 




Brown Bros. 



KING CONSTANTINE OF GREECE 



CONSTANTINE AND VENIZELOS 87 

militant and imperialistic. It was not narrowly 
national; but it was the father of modern national- 
ism. The democratic ideal of M. Venizelos is a 
Greater Greece, uniting within its boundaries all 
the redeemed groups and segments of the Hellenic 
race, governed by an all-Hellenic parhament. It 
is a political, as distinguished from a social, concept 
of democracy; its stamp is of the year 1848 rather 
than of 1922. 

Mr. Justice Brandeis once referred to Secretary 
Hughes as one of the most enlightened minds of the 
eighteenth century. One may call Venizelos one of 
the greatest statesmen of the early nineteenth 
century, — perhaps the greatest statesman of the 
spirit, born of French parentage in the Germany of 
Stein and Hardenberg and Korner, carried at once 
to victory and defeat by the Allied arms at Leipzig, 
stifled by the Congress of Vienna, resurrected and 
downed again in 1849. Of all European countries 
that spirit rose to full fruition in Italy alone. The 
Balkan war of 1912, which brought M. Venizelos to 
European prominence, was the last wingbeat but 
one of the national risorgimento of the nineteenth 
century. The last was the phase of the World War 
which liberated the oppressed races of Austria- 
Hungary and restored Poland. The difference be- 
tween the democracy of President Masaryk of 
Czechoslovakia and that of Premier Venizelos of 
Greece is the difference between the economic 
development of Western and Eastern Europe re- 
spectively, A.D. 1918. 



88 EMINENT EUROPEANS 

With their characteristics, physical and mental, 
presenting such glaring antithesis, is there any 
wonder that partisanship, in no issue of the war 
bitterer, should have indulged in conceiving the duel 
of Venizelos and Constantine as that of Good and 
Evil, of Light and Darkness, of Ahuramazda and 
Ahriman? The files of the Constantine- Venizelos 
polemics furnish the supreme instances of what may 
be called the demonological interpretation of 
history. In this case Ahuramazda and Ahriman are 
interchangeable. According to one school, there is 
no virtue of which Venizelos is not the incarnation, 
there is no vice, no depravity of which Constantine 
is not the horrible example for all ages. Turn the 
names around, and you have the exegesis and apolo- 
getics of the other religion. In the heat of this 
theological controversy the very characteristics of 
the opponents are exchanged; to Constantinists 
their hero appears vested in all the glory of typi- 
cally Venizelian virtues, and vice versa. One of 
Constantine's American apologists raises lack of 
humour to the Tith power by seriously asserting that 
Constantine — that 100 per cent Nordic Teuton, if 
there ever was one — is a more genuine Greek than 
Venizelos. 

There is perhaps one quality that both hold in 
common. It is stubbornness. Yet the very agree- 
ment spans an abyss of difference. Constantine's 
will is like a Teutonic knight in full armour, riding 
his chain-mailed mount to charge. That of Veni- 
zelos is visualized by a Japanese wrestler. Or else. 



CONSTANTINE AND VENIZELOS 89 

to change the figure, — which is the more stubborn 
— a block of concrete or a girder of steel? 

II 

There is significance in the fact that each man 
lacks the most striking quality of the other. The 
most obvious, also the most effective attribute of 
Venizelos is his intellectual superiority: of Con- 
stantine, his personal magnetism. 

The greatest tribute to Venizelos's intellectual 
power was rendered by Constantine himself. 
"When he is with me I confess that his arguments 
are so convincing that I quickly begin to imagine 
that they are my own," he said once. On the other 
hand, no one who ever came into contact with Con- 
stantine, not even the wildest American cor- 
respondent bursting with the ambition to tell him 
what an unspeakable traitor he was, could remain 
unaffected by the charm emanating from that 
kingly personage. A Venizelist lady who wrote a 
rather vituperative book about him said that no 
woman could possibly resist the smile of his blue 
eyes. It would seem that the only mortal, male or 
female, who did not melt away in Constantine's 
radiance is M. Venizelos himself. 

Certainly the saying, "Every inch a king," has 
never applied more strikingly to a ruler — and that 
means a good deal, for Constantine measures six 
feet six inches. The highest compliment to his 
splendid physique was probably paid by the Ameri- 
can visitor who, issuing from an audience with him, 



90 EMINENT EUROPEANS 

burst into a sigh: "What a wonderful guard for the 
Harvard eleven was wasted to make a king!" 
Another admirer from the States declares that Con- 
stantine is the "personification of majesty." 

On occasions of state, in full dress uniform, with 
blue and white plumes on his head and his marshal's 
baton (he has two: a Greek one, and also a Prus- 
sian) in hand — verily, no finer specimen of the 
Blond Beast can be imagined. Much of his charm 
is explained by the contrast between his majestic 
appearance and the amiable directness of his man- 
ner. How could an American resist when this 
Scandinavian war god in blue and silver offers him 
a cigarette and lights it to boot? 

We are told that he talks much and well, rather 
vivaciously, pounding the table now and then, or 
twirling his silky moustache with his fine long hand. 
He affects sangfroid, but at the same he "registers," 
like an actor in the movies, every emotion that 
crosses his system — he is an actor whose favourite 
role is pretending that he isn't one. 

Perhaps the best symbol of his personality is that 
tchako with the blue and white plumes about 
which Mr. Paxton Hibben is so enthusiastic. M. 
Venizelos, indoors, always wears a little black silk 
skull cap — reminiscent of Mr. Pickwick and an 
orthodox Rabbi from Galicia. He and Constantine 
could no more exchange their respective headgear 
than their heads. 

American visitors adore Constantine. So do his 
soldiers. Some one has said that the King, though 



CONSTANTINE AND VENIZELOS 91 

not a good general, is a good soldier. Why not? 
Soldiering is his one passion, his vocation and avoca- 
tion. He learnt the art in Prussia — a fact of which 
both he and his enemies made much, though at dif- 
ferent junctures, — at the Staff College, and he was 
an officer of the Imperial Foot Guards. But in one 
thing he surpasses his Prussian masters. He loves 
to go forth among his soldiers and fraternize with 
them, and he knows how to do it. He has an ex- 
cellent memory, and knows hundreds of his soldiers 
by their first names. 

In the Balkan war of 1912 he distinguished him- 
self by taking Salonica. The inside story of that 
feat is intriguing. For one reason or another (to be 
unearthed, possibly, some day in the archives of 
Berlin or Vienna) Constantine was not anxious to 
enter Salonica, and did so only under heavy pres- 
sure from Venizelos, who telegraphed to King 
George not to allow the Crown Prince to divert the 
army into the direction of Monastir. Constantine 
was also hailed as the conqueror of lanina, the 
Epirus fortress. Here, again, he received efficient 
help from General Danglis, assigned to the task by 
Venizelos. 

But the greatest military feat that attaches to 
Constantine 's name, apart from the victory over 
the French marines, related below, is connected with 
the baptism of his youngest child. Constantine 
made the entire army and navy godfather. This 
established a direct family tie, considered very 
strong in Greece, between him and every soldier and 



92 EMINENT EUROPEANS 

sailor, the mutual appellation between father and 
godfather being "koumharos" equivalent of the 
French compere. Never was an act of courtesy 
better rewarded. The soldiers and sailors went 
hysterical with delight. After reviews Constantine 
is wont to mingle with the soldiers ; he shakes hands 
with them, and calls them by their first name, and 
they address him, not as "Your Majesty," but as 
"houmharos." Sometimes democracy, like honesty, 
is good business. 

Constantine always, or at least of late years, 
understood better than Venizelos how to be on good 
terms with a crowd. Venizelos could impress a 
crowd — he could convince a crowd — he could even 
whip a crowd into a fit of enthusiasm — but Con- 
stantine knew better how to play on their affection 
in the long run. With all his six feet and a half, his 
Teutonic cast and his gorgeous trappings he was 
more like a member of a Greek crowd — of any 
crowd — than the homely but distant Venizelos. 
After all, the advocate who asserted that Con- 
stantine was a more typical Greek than Venizelos, 
was right in the sense: Constantine was a more 
typical man than Venizelos, who would be set apart 
in any mass of men by the cold intellectual glow of 
his genius. 

Constantine not only speaks Greek perfectly, but 
he speaks the familiar idiom of Athenians, whilst 
Venizelos prefers a puristic, classicized speech. 
More is revealed by this one detail than by half a 
ton of propagandist literature. 



CONSTANTINE AND VENIZELOS 93 

There is a story how Venizelos, after his arrival in 
Greece in 1910, made a speech from the balcony of 
his hotel to a crowd assembled below. The issue that 
agitated the public mind at the time was: should 
the National Assembly, elections for which were 
pending, be a Constituante, or should it merely re- 
vise the existing constitution? The difference was 
vital. A constituent assembly would have mooted 
the question of the dynasty, of the form of govern- 
ment. A revisionist assembly would occupy itself 
with reforms of detail, not touching on the form 
of government at all. The hotheads of the Military 
League clamoured for a Constituante. The King 
and the court party sat up nights praying to the 
Almighty for a revisionist assembly. Venizelos 
(one of whose chief principles was ever not to allow 
trees to grow to the sky) sided with the King. 

In the course of his speech from the balcony of 
the Grand Hotel Venizelos remarked, en passant: 
"The Assembly, of course, will be a revisionist 
body." From every direction shouts came: "We 
want a Constituante." Venizelos, without raising 
his voice, repeated with slow emphasis: "I say, the 
Assembly will be a revisionist body." Reinforced 
shouting from the crowd: "Down with revisionism! 
We want a Constituante!" The politicians on the 
balcony watched Venizelos intently. In a sense that 
moment marked the parting of roads. Had the 
Cretan given in to the crowd there's no telling 
where the affair might have ended. It might have 
ended in revolution, in a republic, anything. The 



94 EMINENT EUROPEANS 

popular mood was ripe. Without visible emotion 
Venizelos repeated for a third time : "The Assembly 
will be revisionist." The crowd was nonplussed. 
Never had Athenians been treated like this. There 
was an ominous hush — then wild cheering for Veni- 
zelos. He won. 

The incident, like the matter of the idiom, reveals 
much. It gives a flashlight photo of the man of 
Akrotiri and Therisso who in the very act of waging 
war on four Great Powers of Europe — a Quixotic 
act, to say the least — impressed the representatives 
of those Powers with his sound respectability, with 
his quiet, almost bourgeois, manner. Here was the 
rebel leader, who had risen to leadership because he 
could shoot as well as talk straight, turned conserva- 
tive — not in betrayal of his original purpose, but 
in strict adherence to it. He had changed his 
method, not his end. And that scene on the balcony, 
by disclosing a very important aspect of Venizelos's 
character, lifts for a second the curtain off his 
future. That was not the manner of a Greek 
speaker to treat a Greek crowd. The average Greek 
politician would have yielded to the crowd — or he 
would have argued with it, or harangued, or cajoled, 
or threatened it. He would not have ignored it. It 
might have been less effective — but it would have 
been more Greek. Detachment is not a quality that 
a Greek crowd expects from its leaders. A de- 
tached Greek is almost a contradiction in terms — 
like a spendthrift Dutchman. 

Now detachment, if it be a virtue at all, is es- 



CONSTANTINE AND VENIZELOS 95 

sentially a lonely, an un-social virtue — the very 
word implies loneliness. His detachment would 
have set Venizelos apart as a solitary man even 
among an unsocial people like Englishmen or Nor- 
wegians. But the Greeks are not an unsocial 
people — they are social with a vengeance. They 
could, and did, admire a man like Venizelos — they 
could follow him, even love him — but they could 
hardly regard him as one of their own number. And 
Venizelos was not an Athenian — not even a Greek 
in the strictest sense : he was a Cretan. 

In 1910, when Venizelos was first elected to the 
Greek chamber, the Turkish government protested 
violently his admission on the ground that he was 
an Ottoman subject, and when he was seated never- 
theless he was, in contumaciam, sentenced to death 
by an Ottoman court for high treason. The incident 
nearly led to a declaration of war. And if the Turks 
could never forget that Venizelos was born under 
the Ottoman flag, there were not a few Athenians 
who could not forget it either, and they took care to 
remind the rest. Venizelos was forty-six years old 
when he landed in Greece. That detail must not 
be lost out of sight. 

Ill 

As a speechmaker. King Constantine was less 
restrained than his Prime Minister. He was an 
emotionalist, apt to run away with his feelings — 
sometimes even with those of his audience. There 
was the little matter of his speech at Potsdam, in 



96 EMINENT EUROPEANS 

1913, when he received the baton of a Prussian 
field marshal from his imperial brother-in-law. The 
honour, and the recollection of the grand old days 
when he had been attached to the Prussian Staff 
College and the 2nd Prussian Foot Guards, made 
him eloquent. 

I am proud of being a Prussian officer [he said] . We Greeks 
owe the magnificent victories of our army to the principles of 
warfare which I and my officers acquired through intercourse 
with the Prussian General Staff. To the General Staff I 
owe the knowledge that brought me such brilliant successes 
in the war. 

Now this was both an exaggeration of his own 
part in the war with Turkey, and a grave act of 
discourtesy. Constantine may or may not have 
owed his knowledge to the Prussian Staff College. 
But with the brilliant successes of the Greek arms 
the French military mission, called to Greece by 
Venizelos to reorganize the army, also had some- 
thing to do. To this Constantine made no 
reference. 

Within twenty-four hours pandemonium was 
loose in the Paris press. Venizelos (who may or 
may not have owed his knowledge of how to treat 
the indiscretions of a sovereign to intercourse with 
Prussian chancellors) promptly telegraphed that 
the King was not accompanied by a responsible 
minister, and that the foreign policy of the Greek 
government remained unchanged. The pandemo- 
nium subsided. 



CONSTANTINE AND VENIZELOS 97 

But Constantine was scheduled to visit Paris 
next. A festive reception, after what had happened, 
was out of the question. To drop the visit altogether 
would have created an international scandal worse 
than the speech itself. The old diplomatic expedient 
of incognito travel was chosen. Now, an incognito 
visit by a sovereign does not mean that the city thus 
visited must not know of his presence. It means 
only that the city should pretend not to know of his 
presence. In this particular case Paris refused to 
pretend. A crowd assembled in front of the ter- 
minus. Its attitude was so threatening that Con- 
stantine was hurried to the street through a side 
exit. Some one recognized him — it would be about 
as easy to conceal a polar bear on a Paris street, 
on any street, as the six feet, six inches of Teutonic 
masculinity that is the King of the Hellenes. A 
throng gathered, and Constantine was hooted. He 
was rushed to his hotel — a throng awaited him at 
the entrance. He had to sneak in through a back 
door. 

It is in small events like this that the inexorable 
consistency of Fate manifests itself most vividly. 
Constantine could never forget that side exit of the 
Paris terminus, that back door of the Paris hotel. 
He had never been fond of the French. From this 
moment he hated them with the unforgiving ob- 
stinacy so characteristic of his unimaginative mind. 

Though an excellent linguist otherwise, Constan- 
tine's French is not flawless. For some unex- 
plained reason he learned to speak French late in 



98 EMINENT EUROPEANS 

life. Now, in the ordinary routine of court educa- 
tion, it came to pass that a French tutor was em- 
ployed for his children. Queen Sophie — Kaiser 
Wilhem's sister — was furious. She detested the 
French all her life. She told her children not to 
attend the French lessons. 

The tutor was perplexed. He tried to expostu- 
late with the Queen, who turned her back on him. 
The tutor appealed to the King. 

"I did not learn how to speak French until I was 
thirty-seven," said Constantine, "and then I needed 
it but a few weeks in Paris. It will be the same with 
my children." 

That was the end of the French lessons of King 
Constantine's children. However, the King him- 
self received, a little later, a French lesson, from 
one Senator Jonnart — and he isn't likely ever to 
forget it. Of which more anon. 



IV 



The story of the Constantine- Venizelos duel has 
been told and retold many times. A bare summary 
here will suffice. 

Practically from the first day of the World War 
Venizelos advocated Greek intervention on the side 
of the Entente. He pointed out to the King, in 
conversations and in memoranda, that Greece was 
bound by her defensive alliance with Serbia to send 
troops to the latter's aid ; that apart from considera- 
tions of honour, to assist Serbia was vital for Greece, 



CONSTANTINE AND VENIZELOS 99 

for a crushed Serbia could only mean an enlarged 
Bulgaria and a strengthened Turkey; that the vic- 
tory of the Central Powers would re-establish Turk- 
ish hegemony in the Balkans, and that a Turkey 
thus bolstered up first would crush its own Greek 
subjects and then attack Greece; that Greece, with 
her disproportionately long coast line, her wide- 
flung island possessions and her dependence on sea- 
borne trade, was at the mercy of British naval 
power. 

He also argued that it was important for Greece 
to get in ahead of Italy — he had little doubt that 
Italy would ultimately side with the Allies — be- 
cause only in that manner could Greece obtain 
British and' Trench sanction for her claims in 
Northern Epirus and the Dodecanese, claims that 
were in violent conflict with Italian aspirations. 

On the other hand, he declared, by joining the 
Allies Greece would gain an opportunity, unlikely 
ever to recur, to settle accounts with Turkey for 
good; to unite under her sovereignty all the unre- 
deemed sections of the Hellenic race — those of the 
coast of Asia Minor, of Thrace and of the islands, 
perhaps even Cyprus; to safeguard herself per- 
manently against the danger of Bulgarian en- 
croachments; to secure, finally, the friendship and 
assistance of England and France, the powers that, 
owing to their obvious mastery of the seas, would 
probably win the war. 

King Constantine, on his side, was determined 
from the outset to remain neutral. In various com- 



100 EMINENT EUROPEANS 

munications addressed to the Kaiser, his brother-in- 
law, to Greek diplomatists abroad, to the Bulgarian 
government, and in his many and bitter discussions 
with Venizelos himself, he declared categorically 
that Greece would not fight. That his resolution 
was essentially sentimental, that it was predeter- 
mined by his sympathy for Germany, or rather the 
Imperial house, and by the loyalty of an alumnus 
to his alma mater, the Prussian Staff College, is 
established beyond doubt. There was a time when 
he boasted of this sympathy and this loyalty, even 
though later on he found it diplomatic to deny it. 
For a while he could rationalize his emotion by 
pointing to the military preponderance of the 
Central Powers in the Balkans; but the wish was 
father to the argument. 

The first definite issue occurred in January, 1915. 
King Carol of Roumania, friend of Germany and 
Austria, had just died; there were hopes at Paris 
and London that Roumania would "get in line." 
Sir Edward Grey addressed Venizelos. If Greece, 
he said in effect, would join the Allies, she would 
obtain the coast of Asia Minor as compensation. 
Venizelos was delighted. 

Preparations for the Gallipoli expedition, sug- 
gested by Mr. Winston Churchill in September, 
were in progress at London. No one realized more 
keenly than M. Venizelos the tremendous import of 
the undertaking. He asked for the mobilization of 
an army corps, to be dispatched presently to Gal- 
lipoli. It was denied. He asked for a single 



CONSTANTINE AND VENIZELOS 101 

division. Constantine's Prussian-ridden General 
Staff refused, and Venizelos was dismissed by the 
King. 

The consequences of missing this opportunity 
were later summarized by M. Venizelos himself. 

Five days after the decree of mobilization [he said] the 
army corps which I asked for would have been mobilized. In 
another nine days, with the abundance of material which we 
and our Allies had at our disposal, we should have found our- 
selves with our army corps, or with our one division, in occu- 
pation of the Gallipoli peninsula, which was unguarded, un- 
garrisoned and unfortified. . . . Within ten or fifteen days, 
a part of our Gallipoli forces, especially if we had had an 
army corps, would have advanced to Constantinople and found 
it abandoned by the Turks. 

This was not the vision of a dreamer. By the 
end of February, wrote the American Ambassador, 
Mr. Morgenthau, every measure was taken by the 
Turkish government and by the German and Aus- 
tro-Hungarian Ambassadors to leave Constanti- 
nople to its fate. Trains to rush the high dignitaries, 
the archives and the gold in the Turkish and 
German banks to safety were kept in readiness. 

But the opportunity, perhaps the greatest the 
Allies had in the whole war, was missed. The con- 
tinued neutrality of Greece enabled the German 
General Staff to fortify and garrison the Straits. 
By the time the British forces effected their landing 
everything was ready for their reception. The en- 
terprise ended, despite the unprecedented heroism 
of the British, in a bloody debacle. Constantinople 



102 EMINENT EUROPEANS 

was not taken — and the war was prolonged by three 
years. 

His refusal to assist the Allies in the Dardanelles 
venture established Constantine's standing in the 
Valhalla of German heroes. Temporarily, that is. 
One wonders, in this year of the Lord nineteen 
hundred and twenty-two, if there are many 
Germans whose gratitude to the sovereign of the 
Hellenes has remained unshaken. For three thou- 
sand years, ever since the days of the wooden horse 
contrived by a Greek King, there lingered in this 
world a suspicion of Danaic gifts. In the twentieth 
century a Greek King's contribution to the German 
cause were the war years 1916, 1917, 1918. 



It was on the issue of Bulgaria's attack on Serbia 
that the next round of the Venizelos-Constantine 
duel was fought. 

The Gounaris cabinet, which superseded the 
Cretan in the spring of 1915, restated Greek neu- 
trality in the best manner of Constantinian diplo- 
macy. Its appointment followed by a flaring-up 
of German propaganda at Athens, under the very 
able direction of Baron Schenk. These were the 
days when some of the biggest war fortunes were 
made in Greece. They were founded on the expor- 
tation to Germany of Greek morale, Greek senti- 
ment, Greek flattery — above all, of Greek vows of 
neutrality. Private enterprise in these lines pros- 
pered under encouragement from the State. On 



CONSTANTINE AND VENIZELOS 103 

the other hand, the supply of fuel and other 
provisions to German submarines was reserved for 
a State monopoly, operated by Constantine's naval 
staff. 

Despite the wholesale purchase of Greek news- 
papers and the wholesale bribery of Greek poli- 
ticians by Baron Schenk, despite governmental 
terrorism unprecedented even in Greece, the elec- 
tions in June, 1915, returned a substantial majority 
of Venizelists. In August Venizelos was asked to 
form a new cabinet. But previously Constantine 
secretly gave assurances to Germany that Greece 
would not abandon neutrality even though Bulgaria 
attacked Serbia. 

On September 24 Venizelos learned that general 
mobilization had been ordered by the Bulgarian 
government. He immediately demanded that 
Greece should join Serbia under the defensive alli- 
ance concluded in 1913. For a few days Constan- 
tine equivocated. He harped upon the military 
superiority of the Germans and on the dangers of 
intervention, but he dared not to refuse point blank. 
At last Venizelos confronted him with the choice. 
He said that he had the majority of the Greek 
people with him, and that by thwarting his policy 
Constantine virtually set the Constitution aside. 

At last Constantine showed his hand. "I am 
responsible to God alone," he said. Venizelos ob- 
tained a vote of confidence in the Chamber. Next 
day he was dismissed. 

One of the gravest charges brought against Con- 



104 EMINENT EUROPEANS 

stantine by his opponents is based on his attitude 
toward the Serbian treaty. One of the weakest 
points of his defence is his answer to the charge. 
This answer is defined by the note addressed by 
Venizelos's successor, M. Zaimis — the ex-High 
Commissioner of Crete — to Serbia. The gist of its 
many words is that the treaty of 1913 limited 
Greece's obhgation to aid her ally to the case of a 
Balkan war only. 

This is flatly contradicted by Venizelos, who ne- 
gotiated the treaty himself. He says that it was 
expressly understood at the time that the casus 
foederis was not limited to a Balkan war in the 
strict sense. 

Another argument, not contained in the Zaimis 
note, but stated manifoldly by Constantine both 
previously and afterward, was that Greek military 
assistance to Serbia was contingent on the latter 
country's putting 150,000 men in the field to co- 
operate with her ally. On every occasion Constan- 
tine carefully refrained from mentioning the fact 
that England and France had repeatedly offered to 
substitute the army of 150,000, as Serbia was unable 
to supply it. 

But, damning though the evidence be on these 
two points, the verdict of history upon Constan- 
tine's good faith in the matter of the Serbian alli- 
ance will not rest on them. It will be founded on 
the fact that two days before Bulgaria declared war 
on Serbia Constantine had notified the Bulgarian 
government that Greece would not fight. 



CONSTANTINE AND VENIZELOS 105 

A few days later Venizelos defeated the Zaimis 
government on a vote of confidence. Zaimis re- 
signed. M. Skouloudis was appointed Premier. 
The Chamber was dissolved, a writ for new elections 
was issued. Venizelos directed his followers to ab- 
stain from voting, in protest against the King's 
unconstitutional procedure. The result was that in 
the stead of the 720,000 votes registered in June of 
the preceding year, only 230,000 were cast. Need- 
less to say, the government won a splendid victory. 

The period between October, 1915 and October, 
1916 marks the total eclipse of Venizelos, and the 
zenith of Constantine. It is the period of rolling 
German gold, of secret service a la Metternich, of 
newspapers bought up or silenced by raids and 
confiscation, of the wholesale prostitution of Greek 
public life. Constantine became one of the most 
popular men in Germany. In this period falls his 
refusal to allow the Serbian army transit through 
Greek territory. His reasons for the refusal were 
set forth in beautiful diplomatic prose, but, if one 
can believe the usually trustworthy Mr. John Mav- 
rogordato, the Allies had the last laugh in the affair, 
for the whole agitation to obtain Constantine's per- 
mit for the transit on land was a screen behind which 
the Serb troops were safely transported by sea. 

In this period also fall the invasion of Greek 
territory by Bulgars and Germans; the surrender 
of the important Fort Roupel to the Germans (a 
little matter which cost Greece Northern Epirus, 
promptly claimed by Italy as a punishment), the 



106 EMINENT EUROPEANS 

capitulation of the Hadjopulos army corps of 8000 
at Kavalla ; wholesale delivery of Greek cannon and 
supplies to the Germans; and the blockade of 
Greece by the Allies. Although it was plain that 
under no circumstances would he fight, Constantine 
maintained the Greek army on full war footing — 
and full war footing implied wartime allowances to 
officers. Queen Sophie took over the management 
of all charitable organizations at Athens. She 
managed them with German thoroughness. Thou- 
sands of reservists, drawn to the capital from all 
parts of the country, were sent about to shopkeepers 
and homes to solicit contributions for the united 
charities. The reservists were vigorous young men. 
Contributions were rarely refused. The reservists 
were fed from the soup kitchens maintained by the 
charities. They also received a generous pocket- 
money. Constantine was very popular in Athens. 
So was Queen Sophie. 



VI 



On September 25, 1916, Venizelos left Athens, 
late at night, in utter secrecy. He boarded a small 
steamer and went to Crete — thence to Samos and 
Mytilene and other Greek islandc. On October 5, 
the anniversary of his dismissal by Constantine, 
Venizelos established the Salonica government. On 
November 24 Venizelos declared war on Germany, 
Austria-Hungary and Turkey. Once more he was 
fighting half Europe. It was a homely, cosy feel- 



CONSTANTINE AND VENIZELOS 107 

ing — a memory of his fading youth come to life 
again. 

This time Constantine's answer was not words, 
but a deed. On December 1 the RoyaHst troops at 
Athens, whipped to a frenzied loyalty by the 
speech-making and fraternizing Princes, ambushed 
two thousand English and French marines who had 
landed to secure the surrender of arms and ammuni- 
tion, agreed to by Constantine. The King had 
assured the French admiral in command that the 
Allied troops would not be attacked, and the 
admiral relied on the roj^al word. The result was 
the massacre of a large number of the French and 
Englishmen. The admiral and his staff themselves 
were taken prisoner, but were released afterward. 
It was the greatest victory of Constantine's military 
career, achieved without a coach. For several 
days anti-Venizelist pogroms raged. Scores were 
murdered, hundreds imprisoned, thousands of stores 
and homes looted. Constantine was more popular 
than ever with the reservists. 

He was more popular than ever at German 
General Headquarters, too. On January 26, he 
telegraphed to the Kaiser: 

We send you from the depth of our hearts the most cordial 
wishes on the occasion of your birthday. We are following 
with admiration the great events on land and sea. We pray 
that God grant you very soon a glorious victory over all your 
infamous enemies. We have been honoured by the landing of 
forty Senegalese soldiers intended to guard the French lega- 
tion. What a charming picture of civilization. 



108 EMINENT EUROPEANS 

Another charming picture of civilization was, 
three days later, the saluting of the Allied flags by 
royalist troops in the Zappeion. This was by way 
of expiation for the little mistake of December 1. 

The tragicomedy lasted until June. On the 
eleventh of that month the French High Commis- 
sioner, Senator Jonnart, presented an ultimatum 
demanding the abdication of Constantine, on the 
technical ground that he had violated the constitu- 
tion guaranteed by Great Britain, France and Rus- 
sia. Constantine had his French lesson. He proved 
a docile student. In twenty-four hours he was on 
his way to Switzerland. His son Alexander was 
proclaimed King. Two weeks later Venizelos was 
reinstalled at Athens. Once more Greece was 
united. From this moment the Hellenic Kingdom 
was a full-fledged Ally. For the next three years 
and five months Venizelos was virtual dictator. We 
have had a glimpse of him at the Paris conference. 
With the Treaty of Sevres, which gave Greece the 
last of the Greek-inhabited regions of what was once 
the Ottoman Empire, he reached his zenith. There 
were no more heights to be scaled. 



VII 



In November, 1920, Venizelos was at Nice on a 
well-earned vacation. It was exactly ten years after 
his memorable landing at Pirseus. In the mean- 
time he had elevated Greece from a small poor 
country of the darkest Balkans into a European 



CONSTANTINE AND VENIZELOS 109 

power — restored Hellenic territories beyond the 
wildest dreams of the nationalists — won three wars 
— played an important role at the greatest inter- 
national conference ever held. His career was 
phenomenal — unheard-of — Napoleonic. Professor 
Herbert Adams Gibbons draws the chart of those 
ten years in terms of graphic contrast : 

In 1910 Kaiser Wilhelm could ask contemptuously, Who 
is this man Venizelos? In 1920 Venizelos had a leading role 
in deciding the destiny of the Near East, while the Kaiser 
was sawing wood in a Dutch garden with a sentry watching 
him. 

A naked man jumps far, says a Serbian proverb. 
Ten years earlier Venizelos had arrived in Greece, 
a naked man — unencumbered by family ties, parish 
considerations, clique loyalties, party fetters. He 
jumped, and jumped very far indeed. 

But when a naked man falls after the far jump 
he is apt to fall hard. 

In October, 1920, King Alexander died from a 
monkey-bite. Venizelos summoned Prince Paul, 
who was living at Lucerne, to the throne. Admiral 
Coundouriotis assumed the regency. On Novem- 
ber 14 the general elections took place — the first 
since June, 1915. Next day the world was as- 
tounded by the news that Venizelos was defeated by 
an overwhelming majority. Most of the Athens 
dispatches added that the Greek people decided for 
the return of Constantine. 

In more than one way that was an exaggeration. 



no EMINENT EUROPEANS 

When the first excitement cooled down it appeared, 
as Mr. Mavrogordato points out, that the "over- 
whehning majority" for Constantine was sixty per 
cent of the total as against forty per cent of 
Venizelist vote. Moreover, the sober truth was that 
the sixty per cent majority was not so much for 
Constantine as against Venizelos — an important 
difference. But for the moment subtleties like that 
were drowned in the exultation of the Constan- 
tinists. Mm. Rallis and Gounaris, with their excel- 
lent sense of political coup de theatre, flooded the 
world with accounts of their victory, and announced 
that a plebiscite would be held in a month to decide 
over Constantine's return. 

The Venizelists at once gauged the scope of this 
announcement. They knew only too well that at 
that particular moment of anti- Venizelist elation it 
would be very easy for the Royalists to manipulate 
a plebiscite so as to make the demand for Constan- 
tine appear unanimous. They declared, therefore, 
that they regarded the vote of November 14 as 
binding and final, and submitted to the people's will. 
But the Royalists were not thus to be deprived from 
a cheap and spectacular triumph. The plebiscite 
was held in due course. The result did not disap- 
point. Out of 1,013,724 votes cast 999,954 were for 
Constantine. The Royalist claim that the vote was 
practically unanimous was correct — ^as far as it 
went. Minor details were overlooked. They in- 
cluded military supervision of the voting; an in- 
geniously contrived ballot, which did not show any 



CONSTANTINE AND VENIZELOS 111 

express alternative to Constantine ; and the circum- 
stance that Royalists were permitted to vote as 
many times as they liked. 

The Greeks are a notoriously continent race as 
far as alcohol is concerned. But human nature will 
not be cheated, not even in Hellas. Human nature 
craves intoxicants. The favorite intoxicant of 
Greeks is politics. One hardly ever sees a drunken 
man in the streets of Athens. But the cafes are al- 
ways crowded — with wild-eyed, gesticulating, pas- 
sionate men who sip Turkish coffee from diminutive 
cups — and gulp down politics by the gallon. The 
evening of the day when Constantine was recalled 
by a majority of one million votes will be remem- 
bered as the greatest political orgy in Hellenic his- 
tory. In Athens strangers wearing the royalist 
badge embraced and kissed one another in the 
streets, and smashed the heads of such candidates 
for suicide who wore no badges. White-haired 
Colonels in full dress uniform emulated St. Simeon 
Stylites on top of lamp-posts, shouting "Zito Basil- 
eus" until they fell, exhausted, off their perch. 

VIII 

Constantine was not remiss in improving on the 
occasion. He did not wait even for the plebiscite — 
reasonably enough — but ordered a special train to 
take him from his Swiss retreat to the South Italian 
port of embarkation. And he took pains, now that 
he was vindicated, to tell the world at large that, 
though abused and mortified beyond endurance, he 



112 EMINENT EUROPEANS 

bore no grudge. His mouthpiece was Le Matin of 
Paris, which obhged him by rushing a correspon- 
dent to his side. 

First of all, Constantine asserted, it was a 
malicious as well as absurd lie that he had been pro- 
German. Had he not offered aid to the Allies five 
times, and had he not been politely refused ? As to 
the Serbian treaty — why, Serbia was obliged to 
send 150,000 men to aid Greece, and she didn't have 
them. The army corps of 8000 which at Kavalla 
had surrendered to the Germans and was interned 
at Goerlitz — why, they were isolated, completely 
cut off. He — Constantine — ordered them, through 
Sir Francis Elliot, the British minister, to await 
the ships that were sent to fetch them home, but 
this order somehow never reached them. What 
could they do but surrender, as the alternative 
would have been to rebel against their anointed 
King? Nor was Fort Roupel surrendered to the 
Bulgars by choice. It was completely isolated, and 
the only order sent from Athens was not to open 
hostilities with the Central Powers. 

The story about the Massacre of the First of De- 
cember had been distorted. For one thing, there 
were only 800 royalist troops in Athens, against 
2000 Allied marines. Nobody gave orders to fire 
on the French — some one, perhaps a Frenchman, 
fired a shot — the garrison became excited — there 
were casualties — it was regrettable. Besides, the 
Allies had promised, through M. Benazet, certain 
concessions in exchange for the surrender of arms. 



CONSTANTINE AND VENIZELOS 113 

These promises were never ratified, still less kept. 
The Allied demand thus was illegal. 

Not a very convincing defence, on its face. Mr. 
Mavrogordato, ablest of the Venizelist spokesmen 
in England, points out that the King's best reply- 
to the accusation that he had been pro- German was 
not denial, nor protestation of his pro- Ally senti- 
ments, but simply the question : why shouldn't he be 
pro-German? In 1914, the treaty with Serbia not- 
withstanding, there was no moral, even less a legal, 
obligation for a Greek to be pro-Ally. The onlj^- 
obligation of a Greek was to be pro-Greek. If the 
interests of Greece demanded neutrality, or even 
siding with Germany, it was not only the right but 
the duty of the King of Greece to remain neutral, 
or to side with Germany. The issue, at least, was 
debatable. But Constantine ran true to form. It 
seemed safer — it certainly was easier — to prevari- 
cate than to argue. 

One point of his pleading should be noted. He 
asserted that on December 1, 1916, eight hundred 
Greek soldiers had been drawn, unwilling, into the 
skirmish with the French. It is established as a 
fact that the Greek troops outnumbered mani- 
foldly the Allied marines; and there are witnesses 
who have heard the Princes' harangues against the 
"treacherous Entente," repeated day in, day out, 
in the barracks and cantonments of the royalist 
regiments. 

A rising star never lacks enthusiastic astrologers 
to proclaim its glory. Constantine always had his 



114 EMINENT EUROPEANS 

partisans in the West ; now that he was rehabihtated 
by his people a whole host sprang forward to paint 
the lily white. Most interesting among the argu- 
ments produced at this juncture was the assertion 
of the British Admiral Sir Mark Kerr, who had 
been head of the naval mission to Greece, that 
Greece was not obliged in 1915 to go to Serbia's 
aid, because Serbia herself had broken her engage- 
ment when in June, 1913, she refused to back up 
Greece in her conflict with Turkey. Mr. Mavro- 
gordato finds two faults with this defence. Firstly, 
he says, it was not thought of in 1915 — the Zaimis 
note, which repudiated Greece's obligation, made 
no mention of it. In fact, it emerged for the first 
time in 1917, in a pamphlet by Mr. G. F. Abbott, 
entitled "The Truth about Greece." But being 
manufactured ex post facto was the lesser flaw in 
Sir Mark Kerr's claim. Worse it was that it wasn't 
true. For not only did Serbia in June, 1913, stand 
loyally by Greece, but M. Streit, the Greek Foreign 
Minister, himself conveyed the Greek government's 
gratitude to Belgrade.* 

IX 

Venizelos received the news of his defeat calmly. 
"I hope that the Allies will not punish Greece be- 
cause of Constantine," he said. 

Was his detachment a pose? That question will 
have to be settled between M. Venizelos and God. 

* M. Streit, with General Dousmanis and Colonel Metaxas, formed 
the so-called "invisible government" at Athens in 1916. 



CONSTANTINE AND VENIZELOS 115 

Never since has he said or done anything to justify 
doubt as to his sincerity in the moment of his 
downfall. 

His views concerning the causes of the debacle 
were characteristically clear. "Suppose," he said to 
an English visitor, "your army had been mobilized, 
not in 1914, but in 1912 — and had remained under 
colours until 1920. Suppose Mr. Lloyd George 
had then appealed to the country. He would have 
been defeated. The soldiers who had been away 
from their homes for eight years — all their friends 
and relatives — would have voted against any 
government." 

Venizelos, as he was himself only too willing to 
admit, was in the eyes of the Greek people identi- 
fied with war. He had led them through three wars 
—1912, 1913 and 1916—18. For the Greek popu- 
lar mind the three wars merged into one. For 
Greece, as for Serbia, the World War began in 
1912. 

Then there were his mistakes — undeniable and 
undenied. "He was," says Mr. Mavrogordato, 
"singularly unhappy in his choice of subordinates, 
many of whom were competent only in the perse- 
cution of their political and private enemies." To 
be sure, he had to work with the material he found 
m the spot. He did not introduce corruption, nepo- 
tism and petty oppression into the Greek govern- 
ment; but he did not exert himself sufficiently to 
eradicate those evils. With all his mastery of 
statecraft, and his skill in reorganizing the army 



116 EMINENT EUROPEANS 

and navy notwithstanding, Venizelos was not a 
good administrator. Rather, he was not an admini- 
strator at all. He thought, writes an American de- 
fender of Constantine, "that as long as he devoted 
himself to the service of the Hellenic national inter- 
ests beyond the frontiers of the realm, all questions 
of internal character would have only a secondary 
importance." He committed, in an aggravated 
form, the mistake of President Wilson in going to 
Paris. His prolonged stay abroad was more inevi- 
table than Mr. Wilson's; it was also more pro- 
longed. His absence lasted, not a few months, but 
three years. 

The most tragic trespass of his government was 
one for which he was not responsible at all. It was 
the outburst of terrorism with which his supporters 
avenged the unsuccessful attempt on Venizelos's 
life by a Constantinist fanatic at Paris. The po- 
groms enacted by Constantine's reservists in De- 
cember, 1916, were now duplicated by the opposing 
camp. Among the victims of these lamentable 
excesses was M. Ion Dragoumis, son of the former 
Premier and most brilliant and substantial literary 
figure of Young Greece. According to the official 
version, he was stabbed to death by a soldier "while 
resisting arrest." His death, says Mr. Mavrogor- 
dato, inflicted an irreparable loss on Hellenic life. 

X 

Analogy between Venizelos and Mr. Wilson is 
not limited to the external and accidental connec- 



CONSTANTINE AND VENIZELOS 117 

tion between their absence from home and their de- 
feat at the polls. With all the enormous differences 
of mentality and temperament the two had one 
quality in common — aloofness. In M. Venizelos 
the trait is not so all-pervading as in the American 
President — it is also much less obvious, for Veni- 
zelos's manner is suavity itself, and he is past master 
of an art of which Wilson was utterly devoid — that 
of ingratiating himself with strangers, and with 
journalists. He is also capable of securing the 
allegiance and co-operation of gifted men — a 
capacity not shared by the fancier of rubber stamps. 
But Venizelos was hardly more than Wilson the 
man to inspire lasting personal affection on a large 
scale. He had no magnetism — none, at least, of 
the brand that works upon the masses. He himself 
recognized Constantine's superiority in this respect. 

This aloofness, defect of a preponderant intellec- 
tuality, was capitalized by his enemies. Their 
strongest weapon was branding Venizelos a for- 
eigner. His origin told against him. With the 
"first families," with the political clique of Athens, 
antipathy and envy took the form of snobbishness 
abusing the parvenu, the homo novus, the Cretan 
comitadji. "He is a nobody — he is not of the 
great family of Venizelos" said M. Rallis to Mrs. 
Kenneth-Brown. "So much the worse for the 
great family of Venizelos" came the appropriate 
answer. 

As regards the common people, the cry of 
"foreigner" proved most effective. When in 1915 



118 EMINENT EUROPEANS 

Venizelos was considering to placate Bulgaria by 
ceding the Drama-Kavalla region (a loss amply- 
compensated for by the British promise of the 
coast of Asia Minor) the politicians of Athens said 
to the crowd : "Look at this foreigner — he wants to 
sell out Greek land and Greek souls to the Bulgars." 
His main support came from New, rather than 
from Old, Greece — from the redeemed provinces, 
Macedonia, Thrace, Crete, the islands, not from the 
original kingdom. 



XI 



But he was not only a Cretan — he was altogether 
un-Greek. He introduced and championed an en- 
tirely new element in Greek life. This Cretan 
mountaineer was the apostle of Western civiliza- 
tion. Greece, shut off by history and geography 
from the main currents of European life, remained 
a world unto itself even after the liberation, even 
after the importation of a Western varnish with 
the Bavarian and Danish dynasties and the develop- 
ment of trade with the West. Greek ideology 
showed all the terrible effects of inbreeding and 
inward growth, of the lack of constant comparison, 
of the absence of tests. 

Some small nations have an international, cosmo- 
politan touch about them that is denied to the great 
ones. Conscious of their material smallness, they 
seek to broaden their spiritual outlook. In a sense 
Danes and Swiss and Roumanians are better Euro- 



CONSTANTINE AND VENIZELOS 119 

peans than Englishmen or Frenchmen, who live in 
self-sufficient national universes. In this respect 
Greece carried the murderous handicap of her own 
glorious past. Wasn't Hellas the fountainhead of 
European civilization? Europe owed a debt to 
Greece and Greeks were too content to live on the 
hope that the interest would be paid some time. 
Greece — one must remember the Greeks call their 
country Hellas, and themselves Bomeoi, Romans — 
was the centre of the universe. She was perfect. 
If the rest of Europe refused to shape their culture, 
their politics, their whole life on Greek lines — why, 
so much the worse for the rest of Europe. 

Venizelos, inveterate revolutionist, declared war 
on this deadly provincialism. He represented the 
West. He told Greeks that theirs was a small and 
poor and backward country, that their megalo- 
mania was absurd, and if they wanted to survive at 
all they had to learn everything from bottom up, to 
reform their political and economic life, their educa- 
tion, their manners, their whole mentality, on Euro- 
pean models. He could not open his mouth without 
reminding the Greeks of their worst faults, without 
exposing their Hellenocentric phantasmagories to 
ridicule. France and especially England always 
haunted his words. 

To the multitude nothing could be more odious. 
Some of the elder statesmen — men of the highest 
personal culture — knew how right Venizelos was; 
but they recognized the tremendous propaganda 
value of the unpopularity of his views, and they 



120 EMINENT EUROPEANS 

were unscrupulous enough to raise the issue of 100 
per cent Hellenism. This Cretan, this foreigner, 
was a traitor to Hellas. What did he want with his 
new-fangled ways, his alien — French and English 
— notions? Greeks were accustomed to do things 
in their own way for three thousand years — they 
were good enough ways, too, for were they not the 
ways of Pericles and Alexander? If Venizelos did 
not like it, why, let him chuck it. 

The vote that brought about Venizelos's downfall 
was the vote from the country districts of Old 
Greece, the peasant vote. His following came from 
the larger cities. There is a curious, though not 
surprising, analogy between the return of Constan- 
tine and the triumph of Horthyism in Hungary. 
The Hungarian White Terror was a reaction 
against the Red Terror only in a superficial, chrono- 
logical sense. It was, in reality, a reaction against 
Karolyi, not against Bela Kun — against the West- 
ernism, the "new-fangled ways, alien, — French and 
English — notions" of the Budapest intellectuals. 
The hundred per cent Magyarism of the country 
districts, manipulated by the officers of the army 
and the clique of Budapest politicians, put Admiral 
Horthy into the saddle. The hundred per cent 
Hellenism of the Old Greek peasantry, manipu- 
lated by the officers of the army and the clique of 
Athens politicians, brought Constantine back. It 
is no accident that in both countries the reaction 
represented the triumph of those elements which in 
the late war had been extremely pro-German. 



CONSTANTINE AND VENIZELOS 121 
XII 

To allege that Constantine was brought back 
solely by the unpopularity of Venizelos would be 
unfair. In a sense his victory was his victory, not 
only his opponent's defeat. Venizelos was not only 
a foreigner himself. He had been hoisted into power 
by foreign bayonets. The best of rulers cannot live 
down that taunt. "We don't want you to govern us 
well — we want you to get out" said the Venetian 
patriot, Daniele Manin, to the Austrians. He 
summed up the inevitable choice of any spirited 
people between good government and self-govern- 
ment. And Venizelos's government wasn't even a 
very good government. 

Venizelos committed perhaps the greatest mistake 
of his life when he, in June, 1917, came down from 
Salonica to Athens on board an Allied warship. 
Had he, instead, fought his way down by land, the 
Constantinist troops would have joined him en 
masse, and he would have been hailed as the libera- 
tor. This he admitted himself to Mr. V. J. 
Seligman. 

Now, if Venizelos stood for alien rule by grace 
of alien bayonets, Constantine was the martyr of his 
Hellenism. He had all the emotions of a singularly 
emotional people on his side. He was, as Mr. Mav- 
rogordato aptly puts it, the "King over the water." 
Never is a king so popular as when he is over the 
water. A narrow strip of the salty liquid made even 
that dullest of small tyrants, James II., into a hero. 



122 EMINENT EUROPEANS 

Constantine was a great and good man — he did not 
want to drag Greece into the war — he was a friend 
of the people, said the Epistrates who were fed from 
Queen Sophie's soup kitchens — he was one of our- 
selves, said thousands of military godfathers. 

Moreover, all the petty and great chicaneries of 
the period October, 1915, to June, 1917, were over- 
shadowed by the more recent transgressions of the 
Venizelist bureaucracy and the encroachments of 
the Alhed military representatives. 

"Absence makes the heart grow fonder," said 
Venizelos to a friend who discussed with him the 
outbreak of Constantinomania at Athens in De- 
cember, 1920. Barring his death, Constantine's 
return was foreordained by the manner of his 
departure. 

Much was made by certain journalists of the 
myth attaching to Constantine's name. They 
quoted an ancient Greek legend to the effect that 
Constantinople, lost when the Turks defeated and 
killed the last Emperor of the East, Constantine 
Paleologos, in 1453, would be recovered to Hel- 
lenism when another Constantine reigned over the 
Greeks. Nothing could be more romantic. Mr. 
Mavrogordato was unromantic enough to investi- 
gate. Careful search of Greek folklore failed to 
reveal the existence of the alleged Byzantine legend. 
Careful search of the Athenian press revealed the 
origin of the invention. On the other hand, there 
existed a Byzantine tradition that Constantine 
Paleologos was not killed by the Turks, but es- 



CONSTANTINE AND VENIZELOS 123 

caped and was hidden in Hagia Sophia by an angel. 
He would return, like Barbarossa, when his people 
needed him. However, not even Athenian editors 
have the courage to assert that Constantine of 
Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Gliicksburg is the 
reincarnation of Constantine Paleologos. 

XIII 

In 1919 the Greek troops fighting in Asia Minor 
picked up some Cretan Moslems, expatriated from 
their native island after the withdrawal of the 
Turks. "You call yourselves Greeks," said one of 
the Moslems, "you have only got here because of a 
Cretan." 

The taunt was true. It was the truth of it that 
the Greeks could never forgive Venizelos. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 



Robert Lansing 

S. B. Chester 

Herbert Adams Gibbons 

Paxton Hibben 

Demetra Vaka 
E. J. Dillon 

John Mavrogordato 



V. J. Seligman 



The Big Four and Others at the 
Peace Conference. 

Life of Venizelos. 

Venizelos. 

Constantine I and the Greek 
People. 

In the Heart of German Intrigue. 

The Inside Story of the Peace 
Conference. 

Greece, Constantine and Ven- 
izelos. Edinburgh Review, Jan- 
uary, 1921. 

M. Venizelos on the Greek 
Situation. Fortnightly Review, 
April, 1921. 



124 



THOMAS GARRIGUE MASARYK 



125 



THOMAS GARRIGUE MASARYK 



In one of his letters to President Wilson Am- 
bassador Page expresses surprise over the fuss 
made at the Court of St. James a propos of the 
visit of King Christian of Denmark, "a country 
with less population and smaller area than New 
Jersey." 

There you have the typical American attitude 
toward small countries. To Mr. Page it matters 
little that Denmark has a better educational system, 
a more evenly diffused material prosperity, better 
sanitation, more advanced methods of agriculture, 
than any other country in the world ; that there are 
fewer murders committed there in a year than occur 
in a day in Chicago; that, all things considered, 
Denmark is probably the most cultured, best gov- 
erned, the happiest of modern nations. And if 
such is the attitude of the American Ambassador 
to Great Britain, what can be expected from the 
man in the street at Peoria, 111.? Yet to-day this 
quantitative standard of America has conquered the 
world. Only in a century which measures the great- 
ness of a nation in square miles of territory, gauges 

127 



128 EMINENT EUROPEANS 

its culture by the number, per capita, of automo- 
biles, and expresses the citizen's worth in dollars 
and cents, is it possible that a man like Thomas 
Garrigue Masaryk should not be universally 
recognized as one of the age's greatest. 

Not that he has failed to attain recognition alto- 
gether; for his own nation idolizes him, and know- 
ing foreigners are aware that his name will endure 
like that of only a few contemporaries. But the 
number of the knowing, in Western countries, in 
America especially, is limited to a handful of stu- 
dents and specialists; and this comparative obscur- 
ity is due solely to the fact that he is the son of a 
small nation. For, entirely disregarding for the 
moment his moral and intellectual stature, his 
achievements in the field of practical statesmanship 
are among the most amazing in this age of political 
portents. If ever the resurrection of a people was 
the work of one man, the resurrection of the Czech 
people after three centuries of quasi-extinction is 
the work of Masaryk. And never has a fight for 
freedom been waged and won against more formid- 
able odds. The Athenians at Marathon were a 
safe bet in comparison. 

At the outbreak of the world war Masaryk, then 
a member of the Austrian Reichsrat, fled from the 
Dual Empire and began to work for the liberation 
of Czechoslovakia. This was at a moment when 
most prudent people in Allied countries, the Battle 
of the Marne notwithstanding, would consider an 
eventual draw, even a moderate German victory, 




u. & u. 



THOMAS GARRIGUE MASARYK 



THOMAS GARRIGUE MASARYK 129 

as an extremely favourable outcome. Masaryk be- 
lieved in Allied victory, and staked his all on it. He 
said that he would align the Czechs and Slovaks on 
the side of the Entente. Now, as a matter of mili- 
tary geography, this was about as sound a proposal 
as aligning, in an American-Japanese war, the 
State of Indiana on the side of Japan. Some 
people thought Masaryk was bluffing; others, 
that he was crazy. But a few influential and far- 
sighted Englishmen and Frenchmen took him 
seriously. 

Masaryk disregarded the sceptics and the scof- 
fers, and went to work. Four years passed — and 
in the summer of 1918 the Allies recognized the 
Czechoslovak Provisional Government as one of the 
actual belligerents. It was a government without a 
country, as yet, for Czechoslovakia was in the very 
heart of the Teutonic empires; but it had an ex- 
chequer, and it had an army. In September its 
gold coins were circulating in Bohemia, and Czecho- 
slovak legions were fighting in France and Italy. 
The end of October brought the end of the Haps- 
burg empire. After three centuries of slavery 
Czechoslovakia was free once more, and Masaryk, 
elected first President of the Republic while still in 
!N ew York, entered Prague in triumph. 

That was an achievement of which it is impossible 
to speak otherwise than in superlatives. And yet 
his statesmanship is not the supreme fruit of 
Masaryk's greatness; it is rather the background 
against which his greatness ought to be viewed. 



130 EMINENT EUROPEANS 

For, like that of all truly great leaders, Masaryk's 
is a moral leadership above all; his greatness is 
moral greatness ; his tremendous hold on his people 
is not merely that of the successful politician, but 
that of an apostle of religion. 



II 



He spent his life in fighting official Christianity, 
and fighting it, within his domain, very successfully. 
His name is anathema not only with the Church, 
but also with the churches; he is as outspoken an 
opponent of stereotyped Protestantism as of 
Popery. The conventionally religious regard him 
as the Anti- Christ, the incarnation of rationalism 
and free-thinking. And yet he stands out as per- 
haps the one real Christian among the practical 
leaders of the age. 

In one of his writings he asks: "Has there ever 
been a better, more exalted, more divine life than 
that of Christ?" And he answers with Rousseau: 
"If Socrates suffered and died like a philosopher, 
Christ suffered and died like a God." In the next 
sentence he gives the clue of his religion. "Christ's 
whole life is Truth. God's Son is the highest sim- 
plicity, he shows purity and sanctity in the true 
sense of the word. Nothing external attaches to 
him and his life, no formalism, no ritualism ; every- 
thing comes from the inner being, everything is 
thoroughly true, thoroughly beautiful, thoroughly 
good." 



THOMAS GARRIGUE MASARYK 131 

Masaryk's life is devoted to the quest of truth 
as the highest simpHcity, the disentanghng of the 
substantial living thing, of reality, from the maze 
of the external, the incidental; his battle is against 
that formalism which stifles the essence of life. He 
calls himself a Realist. The political party which 
he founded and which ultimately achieved the 
liberation of his country was called the Realist 
party — the party seeking the salvation of the 
nation through recognition and moulding of real- 
ities rather than in glamorous dreams of past and 
future. 

Almost every person carries in his soul the image 
of some event or other, rising in an uncanny clarity 
from the mist of childhood's half -memories — a cen- 
tral impression, a kernel around which later ex- 
periences crystallizes, something that gives colour 
and direction to his whole life. Sometimes it is what 
Freudians call a complex ; but it is not necessarily 
pathological; sometimes it is a trifling detail that 
acquires a disproportionate, and to other people 
often unintelligible, emotional emphasis. Masaryk 
tells of two such epochal occurrences in his child- 
hood. His father was a gamekeeper on one of the 
imperial estates in Moravia, and they were very 
poor. Once in a year the emperor came down with 
a retinue of nobles and generals and diplomatists, to 
shoot hares, partridges and pheasants. The com- 
pany deposited their resplendent cloaks and fur- 
lined overcoats in the cottage of the Masaryks ; and 
the whole neighbourhood, poor peasants all of them. 



132 EMINENT EUROPEANS 

foregathered while the shoot was on, to behold and 
admire those fabulous garments, every one of which 
represented an unattainable fortune. Little 
Thomas alone refused to look at the display. "I 
did not like to see those things," the President of the 
Czechoslovak Republic once related this experience 
of the cottager's boy. 'T felt there was something 
radically wrong. Just what, was not clear to me. 
But such a hate I had! That hatred lasted till 
today." 

The other career-shaping episode happened when 
he was fifteen. Being barely able to read and 
write he was, at the urging of his parents, about to 
take employment with the village blacksmith. But 
he disliked the idea. It was not interesting; he 
yearned to see the world, for knowledge, for ad- 
venture. So he packed his little bundle, went to 
Vienna and became 'prenticed to a locksmith. He 
stood on the threshold of his dreams. He was in the 
imperial capital; the wide world lay around him; 
and the trade of locksmiths — how it attracted him! 
Locksmiths were magicians — they opened doors 
forbidden to others, doors behind which were stored 
he did not know what treasures of knowledge — 
locksmiths solved mysteries wrought in steel and 
iron. His fancy was aflame. Then came the disap- 
pointment. Instead of being initiated into the 
wizardry of locks he was put by his master to oper- 
ate a machine of some sort or another — operate it 
day and night, twelve, fourteen, sometimes sixteen 
hours at a stretch. It was one single movement re- 



THOMAS GARRIGUE MASARYK 133 

peated thousands and thousands of times, turning 
out some minor piece of hardware. At the age of 
fifteen Masaryk got an object-lesson in modern 
industriahsm which he never could forget, as little 
as that earlier one in the difference between rich and 
poor. 

Hatred of injustice and hatred of the machine, 
the soullessness and inhumanity of it, became 
Masaryk's dominant passion, the pivot around 
which his Weltanschauung turned. Later in life 
he fought the Hapsburgs and the Germans because 
they represented injustice. He fought the Roman 
church and official Protestantism because he saw in 
them the incarnation of the machine, the lifeless 
thing that demands living sacrifice. He fought 
capitalism because capitalism was the tyranny of 
the industrial machine ; but he also fought IMarxian 
socialism because it also was of the machine, a 
deadly symmetry that would crush the soul of 
man. And the quest of his life, the quest of 
reality, is nothing but the supreme form which 
his hatred of injustice and of the machine has 
taken ; for he holds that through the recognition of 
reality, and reality alone, can man free himself 
from bondage. 

The locksmith's apprentice fled from Vienna to 
his parents' cottage, to the gloomy existence of the 
village failure. But fate watched over young 
Masaryk. With the aid of a benevolent priest who 
perceived the spark that glowed in him he succeeded 
in acquiring an education. He studied at Prague 



134 EMINENT EUROPEANS 

and at Vienna, later in the University of Leipzig; 
and, still a young man, he was appointed Professor 
in the University of Prague. 

Ill 

It is characteristic that the first act which con- 
centrated public attention upon the personality of 
the future founder of the Czechoslovak independ- 
ence was what most people regarded as an attack 
on Czech patriotism. Mournful over the tragedy 
that for three centuries had weighed upon the 
nation, the Czech scholars and poets turned for 
relief to memories of its glorious past. Greatest 
among these was the so-called Manuscript of 
Koniginhof, the charter of Bohemia's historic 
grandeur. Masaryk turned the spotlight of his 
scholarship on this treasure of national lore, and 
exposed it as a forgery. All Bohemia was incensed ; 
he was denounced as a traitor, a blasphemer and a 
German agent. Masaryk stood the fire without 
wincing. He took the offensive, and ridiculed 
those who thought it necessary to bolster up 
Bohemian greatness with unhistoric lies. "A nation 
that is not founded on truth does not deserve to 
survive," he said. 

From that time onward Masaryk never ceased 
to pour scorn on romantic nationalism and to 
preach a realistic conception of national needs and 
duties. He contrasted patriotism, the living sub- 
stance, to patrioteering, a mere ritual and empty 
formalism. 



THOMAS GARRIGUE MASARYK 135 

He exhibited the same strain of civic courage, 
the same contempt for the popular prejudice, the 
same love for truth as carried him through the 
Koniginhof affair, in the celebrated case of Hils- 
ner, the Jew accused of ritual murder. Everybody 
in Bohemia believed the charge; all clamoured for 
Hilsner's head. Masaryk alone stood up for the 
Jew, and proved the accusation of ritual murder 
absurd in general and Hilsner innocent in parti- 
cular. This cost him a good deal of his popularity, 
and one day, when he entered his class, he was 
received with hooting and catcalls. He faced the 
turmoil for a moment, then stepped to the black- 
board and wrote one word on it — "Work." Silence 
fell, and Masaryk addressed the students. "Don't 
drink, don't gamble, don't loaf, but work — that's 
what the Jew is doing and you have to do it, too, if 
you want to beat him." Thereupon he proceeded 
with his lecture. 

Never again was he disturbed. When he related 
this story to me, he added, with his peculiar self- 
conscious, deprecatory smile, as if forestalling 
praise: "God knows, I don't like Jews." He 
meant to imply that he, too, had his prejudices, 
that he was not better than the rest; it never oc- 
curred to him that his very dislike made his attitude 
all the more admirable. 

After all, it was as it should be that the man 
who restored the Czech nation was not a soldier 
nor a politician, but a moralist and a philosopher. 
Nations are known by the heroes they honour ; and 



136 EMINENT EUROPEANS 

the greatest and most revered character in Czech 
history is not a general nor a statesman, but a 
thinker and a martyr, Jan Hus, the reformer 
treacherously burnt at the stake by order of the 
Emperor Sigismund at the Council of Constance, 
in 1415. His personality stamped forever all that 
is the best in Czech character; and the greatest 
tribute ever paid to Masaryk was the saying that 
he was lineal descendant and re-incarnation of Jan 
Hus. 

The martyrdom of Hus is the climax of Czech 
history; it was a moral victory as great as the 
annihilation of the Armada was for England. For 
Masaryk the Reformation, which in Rohemia as- 
sumed the form of Hus's teachings, stands out as 
the greatest event not only in Czech history, but 
also in the history of the world. Religion is upper- 
most in his mind ; but religion to him means Refor- 
mation. Rut the Reformation, as he conceives it, 
is not a definite and finite fact of the sixteenth 
century. It continues to this very moment. He 
writes : 

History is often called a teacher and a judge. It is, 
above all, an obligation. The significance of our reforma- 
tion determines the trend of our entire national being. Every 
conscious son of the Czech people finds in the story of our 
reformation his own ideal. Every son of the Czech people 
who knows Czech history must decide either for the Refor- 
mation or for the Counter-Reformation, either for the Czech 
idea or for the Austrian idea. . . . Like all genuine refor- 
mation, that of our country is still incomplete. Reformation 



THOMAS GARRIGUE MASARYK 137 

means an incessant re-forming, uninterrupted renewal, a 
striving for heights, a constant process of perfection; it 
means growth. 

It speaks well for the intellectual and spiritual 
level of the Czech people that Masaryk's teachings 
have won a tremendous hold over them. There is, 
perhaps, no other instance in our age of one per- 
sonality stamping his nation as that of Masaryk 
stamp his own. Even deeper, naturally, and 
more conspicuous is his influence over his pupils 
in the university. A friend of mine, an American 
scholar who knows Bohemia well tells me that he 
can single out Masaryk's pupils — they have an 
ethical attitude toward life's problems, a serious- 
ness and a striving for simplicity that marks them. 

Masaryk's part in the spiritual growth of the 
Bohemian people has been compared with that of 
Tolstoy in the evolution of Young Russia. In 
drawing this analogy, however, one should bear in 
mind the fundamental difference that separates the 
two thinkers, a difference that is not merely indi- 
vidual, but also national. It is the difference that 
defines Russia from the rest of Europe, that is 
dwelt upon by Masaryk himself in his monumental 
work on the spirit of Russia, the greatest, perhaps, 
written on the subject by a non-Russian. It is the 
difference between the individualistic, activistic 
West, growing from a subsoil of Roman civiliza- 
tion, Roman law, Roman religion, and the com- 
munistic-anarchistic, passive, contemplative East, 
heir of the Byzantine tradition. 



138 EMINENT EUROPEANS 

The central concept of Masaryk's religion is the 
idea of humanity, of universal brotherhood. "Bro- 
therhood was the name and also the ideal of our 
national Church, the Church of the Bohemian 
Brethren. The idea of humanity is the fundament 
of our reformation." 

There was a Czech philosopher in the fifteenth 
century, Peter Chelcicky, who preached the idea 
of humanity. But Chelcicky's humanitarian ideal 
implied the doctrine of non-resistance ; he held that 
the use of force was evil under any circumstances, 
even in self-defence. Masaryk tells of the astonish- 
ment of Tolstoy when he discovered that his own 
ideas had been formulated by Chelcicky four hun- 
dred years ago. Masaryk's idea of humanity and 
humanitarianism is different. He defines it as "a 
fight, everywhere, always and by every means, 
against evil." His is a religion of action. "Hu- 
manity is not sentimentalism — it is just work, and 
work again." 



IV 



That utmost tolerance is part of Masaryk's re- 
ligion need not be pointed out. During the war, 
when he went about in the world exhorting to battle 
to the bitter end against German autocracy, he 
never failed to emphasize that he bears no rancour 
against the German people. He adopts Hus's say- 
ing, "I love a good German better than a bad 
Czech." In this, again, he is thoroughly Christian 



THOMAS GARRIGUE MASARYK 139 

— for true Christianity combines eternal hatred for 
sin with forgiveness for the sinner. 

At a mass meeting in Cleveland he pronounced 
a terrible indictment of Magyar tyranny, in a flam- 
ing speech whose burden was Delenda est Hun- 
garia. At the end of the meeting he said to a 
Magyar newspaperman: "Don't think that I hate 
your people. It is my hope and my conviction 
that we and the Magyars will be friends yet, and 
that before long." As President of the Republic 
he applied the Golden Rule to the complicated 
racial problems of the country. The result was that 
within three years he gained the complete confidence 
of the important German minority, and enabled his 
Prime Minister and beloved disciple, Dr. Benes, 
to conclude a treaty with Austria that amounts 
almost to an alliance. Yet anyone who three years 
ago would have predicted a Czech- Austrian entente 
cordiale as an impending development would have 
been denounced as a hopeless Utopian by both 
sides. 

Masaryk carries this tolerance into minute details 
of everyday relationships. A lifelong total ab- 
stainer, he disbelieves in enforced prohibition. Once 
at a dinner party given in his honour somebody pro- 
posed, out of deference to his well-known views, 
that all those present should refrain from taking 
wine. Masaryk protested, not with the perfunctory 
politeness of one who does not want to spoil other 
people's fun, but with the religious-logical fervour 
of one who defends a principle. He took the stand 



140 EMINENT EUROPEANS 

that for people who have no conscientious scruples 
to drink wine it was right to do so. Needless to 
say, a little insistence carried his point. This lati- 
tudinarian attitude of his greatly shocks his wife. 
Mrs. Masaryk is an American — a Brooklynite with 
a New England conscience. One of her sorrows 
is that her husband, as President of the Republic, 
is obliged to keep a wine cellar for state functions. 
She is also very much perturbed over the cigarette 
ashes that remain after a cabinet council in the 
sacred precincts of her husband's study. 

Which reminds me of a story Masaryk once told 
about Tolstoy. They were great friends, and many 
years ago Masaryk visited him at Yasnaya Poly- 
ana. It was in the early days of Tolstoy's resolu- 
tion to live the life of a peasant. He was an 
inveterate smoker. One day Masaryk said to him: 
"You have undertaken to live as a peasant — it sur- 
prises me that you indulge in an expensive habit 
which peasants cannot afford." Tolstoy said he 
had never thought of that before. He put away 
his tobacco and never used it again. 

Masaryk is extremely devoted to his American 
wife whom he met when, back in the seventies, both 
were students in Leipzig. Their romance began like 
so many others — they read together. Once he was 
asked what they had read. He thought for a mo- 
ment and said: "Well, it was Buckle's 'History of 
Civilization' " — he smiled, bashfully, — "you know 
how those things are." Shades of Paolo and 
Francesca ! 



THOMAS GARRIGUE MASARYK 141 

One of the most liberal and humane of men, 
Masaryk has his blank spots, too. I remember 
with what amazement I heard him expound his 
views on monogamy. He considers monogamy as 
one of the basic institutions of our civilization. 
Good. But he carries his conviction to the length, 
not only to utterly repudiating divorce, but of 
maintaining that monogamy should not be merely 
"simultaneous," but also "consecutive" — that for a 
widower or widow to marry is immoral! This, I 
thought afterwards, was, of course, the view of a 
man who wooed his bride, not over sinful stories of 
the flesh like Launcelot and Guinevere, but over 
Buckle's chaste and pompous work. 



Yet he would be gravely mistaken who concluded 
from this that JNIasaryk is altogether too good to 
be human, a mere doctrinaire puritan, a slightly 
overdrawn Hussite saint. There is nothing that 
visualizes for me the spirit of the man more ade- 
quately than the story told to me by the above- 
quoted American scholar. He visited Masaryk at 
Prague in the summer of 1920. One day they were 
sitting in the library of the Hradcany, the proud 
ancient castle of Roman emperors and Bohemian 
kings, now the presidential residence. Masaryk 
pointed to the side of the room lined with books on 
philosophy, and said: "When I was young and 
stupia I read those books to find out truth, but 



142 EMINENT EUROPEANS 

now I read novels which more exactly interpret the 
real things, the struggle of man for reality." One 
of his students tells me that in a course of Practical 
Philosophy they used for textbook Dostoevsky's 
"Brothers Karamazov." 



JOHN BRATIANO, Jr. 



143 



JOHN BRATIANO, Jr. 

I 

The overwhelming victory of John Bratiano in 
the Spring elections of 1922, won immediately on 
his reappointment to the Premiership of Roumania 
after two years' vacation, did not surprise those 
familiar with the drift of political events in that 
distant but interesting land of Latinity on the 
Black Sea. To be sure, his triumph was attributed 
by the Opposition press to "unprecedented govern- 
mental terrorism." Pressure in elections on the 
part of those intra dominium is never absent in 
any country. Now whatever may be said of politi- 
cal ethics, political manners have certainly not 
achieved, in the states of Southeastern Europe, the 
efficient smoothness which in the older countries 
of the West conceals political humbug and chi- 
canery to all but the enlightened and articulate 
few. In other words, when in Southeastern Europe 
some one hits you on the head with a spade, the 
assault is not aggravated by the aggressor's polite 
insistence that the spade isn't a spade but a bou- 
quet of violets, and that anyway the whole affair 
is staged exclusively for your own benefit. Such 
refinements are the mark of a higher civilization 

10 145 



146 EMINENT EUROPEANS 

than that of which the primitive nations of the 
European Near East can boast. 

So, whatever its exact amount, the terrorism 
that assisted in M. Bratiano's victory conformed 
strictly to precedent by being, in the language of 
anti-ministerial journalism, unprecedented. It is 
a fact that a considerable number of Roumanians 
had for some time looked forward to Bratiano for 
the execution of that economic programme which is 
destined to secure for Roumania, gatekeeper of the 
hardly tapped wealth of Euxine lands and of Cau- 
casia, herself one of the richest countries, poten- 
tially, of Europe, a place of first importance in the 
continental hierarchy of States. 

No Roumanian statesman has contributed more 
to the formulation of that programme than M. 
Bratiano. He is often denounced by personal ene- 
mies both at home and abroad as a reactionary. 
However, it should not be forgotten that it was he 
who conceived, long before the word Bolshevism 
was ever heard of in Western Europe, the idea of 
building a dyke against it by creating a strong and 
contented freehold peasantry in Roumania. The 
land reform, enacted after the war, and providing 
for distribution of the great estates among the peas- 
ants with compensation to the old owners, was 
originally championed by Bratiano. 

But Bratiano's popularity among his people does 
not rest on the soundness of his ideas alone. Rou- 
manians regard him as the typical Roumanian, the 
representative man of their nation. 




© Brnwi) Bros. 



JOHN BRATIANO, JR. 



JOHN BRATIANO, Jr. 147 

Now there are two senses in which the represen- 
tative man of a nation may be defined. In one 
sense the representative man is the incarnation of 
the national genius, depositary of the best racial 
traits raised to the nth power. It is in this sense 
that one calls Abraham Lincoln the representative 
American, Goethe the representative German, Tol- 
stoy the representative Russian. But there is an- 
other, more humdrum and pedestrian meaning of 
the term "representative man." One that merely 
implies a blend of average racial traits, perhaps 
intensified in degree, yet typical, — that, plus the 
quality called personal magnetism. Using the word 
in this second sense, the representative man of a 
nation is one whom women of his own race adore, 
perhaps because some deep-lying instinct tells them 
that he is particularly fitted to perpetuate the 
species in its utmost purity. 

Roumanians will tell you that John Bratiano, Jr., 
is a representative Roumanian; they will also tell 
you that he is the idol of Roumanian women. He 
certainly possesses qualities the value of which is 
evident to the objective observer: he has family and 
wealth, he is extremely clever and very well edu- 
cated, he has a good physique, he is energetic and 
industrious; but all these advantages do not quite 
explain, to the foreigner at least, the peculiar, one 
almost would say, mysterious, power that he wields 
over the feminine half of his people. He is irresisti- 
ble. He is a variant, coloured by his time and place, 
of that great eternal inexplicable type, Don Juan. 



148 EMINENT EUROPEANS 

Before his marriage he was treated by his coun- 
trywomen like an oriental Sultan. After his mar- 
riage — well, he is an affectionate husband, and his 
wife — one of the most charming ladies in Rou- 
mania, whose salon at Bucharest is a European in- 
stitution — has no reason to complain. 

He is perhaps not handsome in the Anglo-Saxon 
taste, but his appearance is striking. With his olive 
complexion, his long pointed black beard, he may 
be described as a sort of Byzantine Christ in a 
morning coat and spats. But this Byzantine Christ 
speaks French like a Paris clubman. Only Rou- 
manians can appreciate how thoroughly Roumani- 
an he is even in his exquisite French culture — for 
you cannot be a good Roumanian without being, 
spiritually, at least three-quarters French. 

Also, he is the consummate party leader, 
equipped with all the infinitesimally refined tools 
of Eastern intrigue and yet Western as a manipu- 
lator of big finance for political ends. For the 
great banks of Roumania there exists one Rou- 
manian statesman — Bratiano. The rest are mere 
parish politicians. Again, how typically Roumani- 
an he is in his blending of the political ideology 
and methods of East and West! 

II 

His part in the Great War must not be under- 
estimated. It was a curious part, antedating not 
only Roumania's entrance into the war, but the 
outbreak of the war itself. The uncertainty in 



JOHN BRATIANO, Jr. 149 

which he left the whole world of diplomacy as to 
the side Roumania would eventually take was a 
master-piece of political strategy. Vacillation as 
a fine art had been brought to the highest pitch 
of perfection by Roumanian rulers during centuries 
of precarious existence wedged in between the deep 
sea and a whole assortment of devils — Turkish, 
Tartar, Polish, Hungarian, Imperial. Bratiano 
proved a worthy successor. The Germans 
thought that he would never fight against them, but 
feared that he might not fight for them. The 
Allies doubted if he ever would fight for them, 
but hoped that he would not fight against them. 
In the moment of decision he went in with the 
Entente. The results were catastrophal for Rou- 
mania, but out of the catastrophe she emerged with 
her population and her territory doubled, the sixth 
largest country in all Europe, and the dominant 
one in the Southeast. To be sure, neither the catas- 
trophe nor the apotheosis were exactly due to Brati- 
ano's efforts — but it is all the more typical of 
his paradoxical personality that although he had 
slipped the reins in the race he was there when 
the goal was passed, and very much there when 
the prizes were distributed. Moreover, every one 
in his country thought that this was exactly as it 
should be. Roumanians have come to acquiesce 
in Bratiano as they acquiesce in the weather — they 
may complain about it occasionally, but there is 
nothing to be done. 

At the peace conference in Paris he scored an- 



150 EMINENT EUROPEANS 

other typical achievement. Of all the plenipoten- 
tiaries he was probably, not even Mr. Wilson 
excepted, the most thoroughly unpopular. He 
succeeded in rousing against himself the emnity of 
everybody that counted — above all, the enmity of 
the Big Three. What was the cause of this peculiar 
and emphatic isolation of his is not clear. With 
Lloyd George and Wilson it was, perhaps, the good 
old Anglo-Saxon distrust of a beard too black and 
too pointed to be entirely honest. Also, there was 
that subtle Jewish influence over these two arbiters 
of the world — one of the most interesting aspects 
of the Paris conference, often alluded to but never, 
as yet, elucidated. This Jewish influence was a 
priori anti-Roumanian, owing to the old grievances 
of the Roumanian Jewry. Wilson's antipathy was 
carried to such extent that it was only with the 
greatest difficulty that Bratiano could obtain an 
audience with him, and when the two left Paris 
they were still almost total strangers to each 
other. But no one was quite so rude to Bratiano 
as Clemenceau, not even Wilson who was, God 
knows, rude enough. Perhaps M. Mandel, Cle- 
menceau's factotum, had something to do with 
this rudeness. Perhaps Clemenceau had, in Brati- 
ano's presence, a feeling which whispered into his 
subconscious ears: "There, but for the grace of, 
as it were, God who created me a Frenchman, go 
I." The only one among the important persons 
who was nice to Bratiano was Colonel House — but 
then, Colonel House was nice to everybody; he 



JOHN BRATIANO, Jr. 151 

could not help it ; he was, as they say in the States, 
born that way. 

Here were indeed, the makings of a fatal failure 
for a statesman and a diplomatist. For Bratiano 
they netted a political capital on which he may live, 
the thrifty soul he is, till the end of his days. He 
held a brief for Roumania. He stood up for the 
sacred rights of Roumania. He was insulted — in 
his person the honour of the Roumanian nation was 
outraged. If he failed it was not because he was 
weak — it was because the others were wicked. 
Bratiano had come to Paris as the plenipotentiary 
of the King of Roumania, and was beaten. He 
returned home as a national hero. 

Perhaps this strange fruition of success out of 
defeat was possible just because Bratiano was such 
a typical Roumanian. He had his country un- 
divided with him as no other statesman had his; 
certainly not Wilson, not even Lloyd George. 
Whatever else Wilson may have been he was not 
a typical American. The English may permit a 
crafty Welshman to rule them, they may even 
condescend to admiring the crafty Welsliman, but 
they cannot forget his being Welsh for a moment. 
Then there was Venizelos. He, too, stood up and 
fought the battle of his country, and fought it well ; 
yet his country could never quite forget that it was 
not entirely his; that he, the Cretan, was after all 
a foreigner, subtle mercenary at the worst, clever 
proselyte at the best. Herbert Hoover could not 
become President of the United States because he 



152 EMINENT EUROPEANS 

had lived in England for several years. Wasn't 
the breakdown of Venizelos due to the fact that 
he had come to Greece at the age of forty-six? 

Then Bratiano went home, in the triumph of his 
defeat. After a while he resigned, but in his coun- 
try everybody felt that this was not so much a re- 
tirement as an absence of leave. They looked 
forward to a Bratiano ministry as something inevi- 
table. But Bratiano remained in the background, 
well knowing that time was working for him. At 
the end of 1921 his shadow was already on the wall. 
In January, 1922, he was Prime Minister again, 
with his rivals scattered into nothingness, within 
and without Roumania — the one representative 
statesman of the Balkans. What has the future 
in store for him? 



Ill 



The past had certainly been gracious to Bratiano. 
He was not, as the French say, a son of his works. 
His father, scion of a prosperous Wallachian clan, 
played a part second to none in the making of the 
Roumania of to-day. He was one of the leaders 
of the revolution in 1848 which expelled the ruling 
Prince Stirbey, protege of the Russians. Later 
he had to flee and took refuge in Paris. But, once 
acquired, the taste for revolutions is habit-forming. 
In Paris Bratiano was among the instigators of 
the Orsini bomb attempt which nearly cost Napol- 
eon III. his life. Some revolutionists are hanged, 



JOHN BRATIANO, Jr. 153 

others are electrocuted, others, again, guillotined, 
according to the form that national culture gives 
to legally enforced murder. But there are revolu- 
tionists who fare better. In this snobbish world 
of ours good family connections are essential 
in every walk of life, even in that of the bomb- 
thrower. If you are lucky enough to possess 
them you get fined only where others get 
finished. For his part in the Orsini conspiracy 
young Bratiano the elder was fined <£120 and then 
sent on a vacation, in one of those lovely quiet 
establishments where sons of millionaires are wont 
to live down indiscretions, whether of a financial, 
amorous or political nature. 

The rest-cure house of Dr. Blanche at Paris was 
justly famous, and its guests were amply compen- 
sated by comfort, quietude and an excellent cuisine 
for the slight disadvantage that in plebeian parlance 
the place was known as a lunatic asylum. In this 
idyllic retreat young Bratiano spent some delight- 
ful years in study and epicurean contemplation. 
In the end he was freed, a wiser though not neces- 
sarily sadder man, and returned to Romnania. At 
once he became leader of the Liberal party, the chief 
political instrument in the forging of Roumanian 
unity. It was Bratiano's party which imported 
Prince Charles of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen for 
a ruler, which later made a King out of the Prince, 
and which secured for the new Kingdom access to 
the Black Sea. 

Here I would remark, in passing, that party 



154 EMINENT EUROPEANS 

names in Eastern Europe are not always inter- 
pretable by their Western phonetic equivalents. 
The Liberal party of Roumania, like the Liberal 
party of Hungary between 1867 and 1900, would 
have been more correctly called the Mercantile 
party. It was the party favouring Western methods 
of finance and industry as opposed to the patriar- 
chal Oriental economy, and advocating a certain 
enlightened administrative centralization as against 
the traditional Oriental indolence. It had as little 
to do with philosophic liberalism as the National 
Democrats of Poland — originally the party of the 
Czarophile and anti-Semitic magnates — have to do 
with democracy. 

During twenty years John Bratiano the elder 
governed Roumania as if he were the real King. 
He also became the father of a large family, and 
accumulated a very considerable fortune. When 
he, shortly before his death, fell from power, it 
seemed that nobody would take up the sceptre 
which he had dropped. 

John Bratiano was his eldest son. He had 
studied in Paris, was fond of engineering and none 
too fond of politics. But in a small country the 
scion of a great political family has no choice. 
Some go in for politics, others are dragged into 
politics; all are in politics. John Bratiano, Jr. 
was dragged into politics — people said, on the 
strength of his father's reputation. For years he 
played a quiet, almost obscure part; but even then 
he was busy forming those friendships with the 



JOHN BRATIANO, Jr. 156 

great financiers of his country which later became 
his principal asset. 

Then, little by little, he asserted himself. By 
1907 he was the leader of the Liberal party which 
presently engaged in the advocacy of land reform. 
That advocacy culminated in the law providing for 
the breaking up of big estates in 1920-21. The 
idea of a land reform from above as the best safe- 
guard of internal stability was Bratiano's one con- 
tribution to Roumanian politics; the other was the 
realization, obvious enough to the foreign student, 
but not quite so obvious to those engrossed in the 
personal intrigues and parliamentary marches and 
counter-marches of a small country, that Rou- 
mania's salvation lay in the development of her 
colossal natural resources. Since 1907 Bratiano 
was sometimes in power, at other times out of 
power; but all the time he was, more or less, the 
power; and his countrymen, including the King, 
knew it. 

Economically Roumania was, largely speaking, 
tied up with Germany and Austria-Hungary, al- 
though the bond was the unwilling one of Isolde 
with old King Mark, with the French Tristan in 
the background receiving clandestine tokens of 
affection. John Bratiano bided his time. 



IV 



From 1914 to 1916 Bratiano executed one of 
the most notable performances of political rope- 



156 EMINENT EUROPEANS 

dancing in history, across the vortex of the Euro- 
pean war. He succeeded in keeping both the 
Entente and the Central Powers guessing as to 
Roumania's real designs. The doubts of friends, 
the trust of enemies were equally insulting, but 
Bratiano did not mind. "The double face of the 
weak is more powerful than the sword arm of the 
strong," says an Arabic proverb. 

At last Roumania entered the war, at her own 
terms. The terms were good enough, but the 
Allies, who underwrote them, did nothing, or next 
to nothing, to keep them. Roumania was overrun 
and broken. She cannot be entirely blamed for the 
catastrophe. She did what Italy had done, only 
under much less favourable circumstances. 

Assuredly, Bratiano had his share of the re- 
sponsibility. There was alwaj^s an Oriental ele- 
ment in him, which is a polite name for laziness; 
diffident by nature, he had occasional spells of 
trusting the wrong people; he now was guilty of 
an unscientific acceptance of unverified premises. 
Wherever the blame lay, Roumania paid a heavy 
price. Bratiano fell. The Peace of Bucharest was 
signed by the old pro-German politician, Marghilo- 
man, as Premier. But just as Roumania owed her 
defeat to Allied delinquency, in the end she came 
out on the top because of Allied victory. The 
Peace of Bucharest was thrown aside. Before the 
armistice was signed Roumania, though badly 
maimed, was on her feet again, and her troops 
took possession of the liberated provinces, Transyl- 



JOHN BRATIANO, Jr. 157 

vania, Bucovina and the Banat — Bessarabia had 
already been occupied. 

The victory brought justification and power to 
Bratiano. He was again President of the Council. 
He went to Paris full of hope as his sovereign's 
plenipotentiary. He had every reason to be hope- 
ful; for the secret treaty which he had concluded 
with the Entente assured to Roumania the frontiers 
that she desired; also, equal rights at the Con- 
ference. 

What awaited him at Paris was the greatest 
disappointment of his life. La Rochefoucauld 
said, "Ow promet selon ses esperances et on tient 
selon ses craintes/" The Allies did not fear Rou- 
mania. All the pledges of 1916 were forgotten. 
The Big Four, or rather the Big Three, or, still 
more exactly, the Big Two, dominated the scene 
with dictatorial power. The story need not to be 
retold. Everybody knows that the representatives 
of the minor Allies were treated iniquitously. The 
representatives of Roumania were treated like dogs. 

They were not admitted to secret sessions. When 
the Treaty of Versailles was being drafted they 
were not consulted. Certain clauses of the treaty 
having a vital bearing on Roumanian interests, the 
Roumanian delegates were summoned to take cog- 
nizance of them. Bratiano found certain provisions 
objectionable and rose to lodge a verbal protest — 
the treaty was to be presented within a day or two 
to the Germans and there was no time for written 
exchanges. No sooner was he on his feet than 



158 EMINENT EUROPEANS 

Clemenceau shouted at him: "M. Bratiano, you 
are here to listen, not to comment." 

When the drafting of the Austrian treaty was 
completed Bratiano was shown the text only on 
the evening before the document was to be handed 
to the Austrian delegates. He entered objections 
to a number of clauses which he thought injurious 
to the interests of his country. The objections were 
recorded. When Bratiano and his colleague Misu 
were called upon to attach their signatures to the 
treaty they glanced at the text once more and 
discovered that the clauses which they had opposed 
were left unchanged. 

The humiliations of the Roumanian delegates in 
Paris are told at length by Dr. Dillon in his book 
"The Inside Story of the Peace Conference." He 
suggests, among other things, that in the matter of 
the guarantees of minority rights * pressure was 
applied to Roumania not only by way of satisfying 
Jewish sensibilities, but also in order to extort im- 
portant commercial concessions for a group of 
Jewish financiers. As he graphically puts it, 
"abundant petroleum might have washed away 
many of the tribulations which the Roumanians 
had afterward to endure." ** 

None the less insulting was the attitude of the 

* The Roumanian attitude was, in effect, that what was sauce 
for the goose should also be sauce for the gander — that they were 
willing to undertake any obligation which the Great Powers also 
assumed. 

** The reader is referred to Chapter VI of Dr. Dillon's 
book for a full account of the high-handed methods of the Big 
Three in dealing with the Roumanian delegation. 



JOHN BRATIANO, Jr. 159 

Big Two in the course of the crisis that arose in 
connection with the Bolshevist regime in Hungary. 
The Roumanian delegates had the impression that 
the British, in particular, were inclined to bolster 
up Bela Kun's power for the sake of an early- 
restoration of trade with Hungary. Be that as it 
may, the Roumanians were justified in feeling that 
their pleas for safety did not receive adequate con- 
sideration. Tired of the constant snubbing, they 
at last decided to take matters into their own hands. 
They were unexpectedly assisted in this by Bela 
Kun himself, who on July 20, 1919, attacked the 
Roumanian army. He was defeated, and the Rou- 
manians entered Budapest in triumph. 

It is one of the ironies of history that while 
Messrs. Wilson and Lloyd George tried to ruin 
Bratiano, the dictator of Soviet Hungary should 
have rushed to his rescue. Bratiano scored a vic- 
tory not only over Bela Kun, but also over the 
Big Two. The latter's revenge was not delayed 
long. In September the Supreme Council, yield- 
ing to White Hungarian influence, ordered the 
Roumanians to withdraw from Hungary. Whether 
the order was justified or not is a point I do not 
wish to discuss here. What is certain is that the 
line of procedure chosen by the Supreme Council 
stands unparalleled as an instance of diplomatic 
bad manners. Instead of communicating with the 
Roumanian Prime Minister next door, they sent 
their ultimatum to the Roumanian government in 
Bucharest by radio. There can be no doubt what- 



160 EMINENT EUROPEANS 

soever that this was a calculated insult, a deliberate 
attempt to torpedo Bratiano. Indeed, the latter 
showed considerable restraint when he described the 
course of the Supreme Council as being of a "ma- 
licious and dangerous character." * 

A generation earlier Bratiano's father, as repre- 
sentative of his country at the Congress of Berlin, 
was subjected by Bismarck to humiliations hardly 
less galling than those heaped upon his son at 
Paris. They did not prevent him from governing 
his country for another twelve years — indeed, 
they strengthened his position, for the Roumanian 
people felt that its own honour was involved. Curi- 
ously enough, that incident of the father's career 
was duplicated in the son's; and just as Bratiano 
the elder had survived politically his overbearing 
enemy the Iron Chancellor, Bratiano the younger 
survived Mr. Wilson, and for all I know may yet 
survive Mr. Lloyd George.** When after two 
years' retirement from active politics he was, in 

* Cf. Dr. Dillon, op. cit. The attitude of the American 
representatives at Budapest toward the Roumanians was none 
the less provoking. In particular General Bandholtz, head of 
the American mission, took pains to display his antipathy against the 
Roumanians, while maintaining friendly relations with the unspeak- 
able Stephen Friedrich and other leaders of the Hungarian White 
Terror. Not only were the charges, circulated by the Magyar Whites, 
of Roumanian atrocities unfounded, but there is authentic testimony 
that the presence of the Roumanian army alone prevented large scale 
massacres of Jews and Socialists by the Magyar Hooligans. 

** In 1919, when Bratiano resigned from the premiership, Mr. 
Lloyd George asked the Roumanian representative in London to 
convey his felicitations to the successor, and then added: "I do hope 
that I shall not see M. Bratiano Premier again." 



JOHN BRATIANO, Jr. 161 

January, 1922, appointed Premier all Roumania 
heaved a sigh of relief — the inevitable had hap- 
pened at last! 

Today he is the one powerful personality in 
Roumania. His position is unique. What has the 
future in store for him? Will it be still more bril- 
liant than his past? Characteristically, it is his 
enemies who hurry to answer that question in the 
affirmative. One Bratiano — his father — had over- 
turned a throne; perhaps the streak lingers in the 
son. 

One of the paradoxes about Bratiano the 
younger, son of the revolutionist of 1848, the Car- 
bonaro of 1858, is his love of the aristocracy. 
Leader of the party that in Roumania stands for 
democratic progress and against the pretensions of 
the old oligarchy, he married a Princess Morouzi, 
daughter of an old Greco-Russian noble house. 
After her death he nearly got engaged to a French- 
woman, the Marquise de Belloie. The affair did 
not come off, and he ended by marrying a Princess 
Stirbey, niece of the ruler whom his father had 
driven from Roumania. All his friends were 
shocked. "It is the ruin of his career." It was 
not. The marriage was a happy one; it did not 
hurt his political affiliations, and helped greatly his 
social ones. 

In the study of the Carbonaro's son one could 
see, with dedications that dazzled his followers, the 
photographs of the Archduke Karl Franz Josef, 
of the Kaiser, of the King of England — but the 



162 EMINENT EUROPEANS 

place of honour was reserved to a huge oil portrait 
of Prince Stirbey, his father's defeated enemy. 
That was in the days before the war; today the 
pictures of the Kaiser and the Archduke are gone ; 
their places are taken by King Albert of Belgium, 
Mr. Balfour, and Colonel House; but Prince 
Stirbey remains. 

What is the significance of this portrait in Brati- 
ano's study? There are people in Roumania who 
wonder. Napoleon married the Archduchess Marie- 
Louise, daughter of the Emperor Francis whose 
empire he had beaten to frazzles, in order to invest 
his own greatness with a halo of legitimacy. John 
Bratiano the younger has married the daughter of 
a former ruling house of Roumania. Even before 
that marriage Roumanians spoke, jokingly, of the 
Dynasty of Bratiano. Jokes have the funny habit 
of turning serious at times. Bratiano today is 
Prime Minister once more. He is by far the most 
powerful man in the country. King Ferdinand, a 
weak though not unintelligent ruler, cannot do 
without him. Those interested in the development 
of the European Near East might just as well 
keep an eye on John Bratiano, Jr. 



COUNT MICHAEL KAROLYI 



163 



COUNT MICHAEL KAROLYI 



No character of the recent world upheaval, with 
the exception of the Big Four of Entente exor- 
cisers, the Kaiser, Constantine of Greece, Lenin 
and Trotzky, has been subjected to such vehement 
and protracted abuse as Count Michael Karolyi, 
first, and temporarily, it would seem, last. Presi- 
dent of the fl^ungarian Republic. He is under at- 
tainder in the land of his ancestors for high treason 
— he has, so his persecutors tell the Magyar people, 
sold the country to the Allies. In Paris, London, 
Rome, Washington, that charge, of course, does 
not form the basis of an indictment ; so it is twisted 
into the accusation that he sold out Hungary to 
the Bolsheviki. 

He was hunted from his country at night like 
a common criminal; and the unrelenting spite of 
his enemies — foremost among whom are his own 
cousins, brothers-in-law, whatnot — drives him from 
one place of refuge to another. Once one of the 
dozen wealthiest men on the Continent, today he 
lives in the penury of a little flat of a small Dal- 
matian town; his wife, daughter of Count Julius 

16.S 



166 EMINENT EUROPEANS 

Andrassy, last Foreign Minister of the Austro- 
Hungarian Empire, one of the most beautiful 
women in Europe, hostess of resplendent salons at 
Budapest and Paris, cooks his meals and mends 
his linen; and their children are brought up like 
those of a workingman. 

Surely the outward contrasts of this extra- 
ordinary career present the outline of a monu- 
mental tragedy. But in Michael Karolyi's case 
the external downfall envelops an inner flight up- 
ward, the attainment of peace with himself, a tri- 
umph over the mere accidentals of Destiny. His 
fate is tragic ; but his tragedy winds its way to the 
final katharsis, the purifying bath of the soul. He 
is a poor man today, a downed man, an outcast, if 
you will — but defeated he is not; for his faith is 
stronger than ever. He has won his battle — he has 
proved himself true disciple of the Son of Man 
who blessed the peacemakers and the pure of heart. 

II 

Michael Karolyi was born in purple — or, if you 
prefer the homely figure of folk tale to the classic 
metaphor, with a golden spoon in his mouth. His 
family is one of the oldest in Hungary, with a 
pedigree reaching back over nine hundred years. 
His uncle. Count Alexander, held the family estate, 
estimated at over $30,000,000, in entail — an estate 
second only to that of the Prince Esterhazy. When 
he died the entail devolved to young Count Michael 
who, still in his twenties, thus advanced from the 




u. & u. 



COUNT MICHAEL KAROLYI 



COUNT MICHAEL KAROLYI 1G7 

comfortable and irresponsible state of a junior 
member of his clan to a position of unique splen- 
dour and responsibility as the second temporal peer 
of the Magyar realm. 

The Karolyi estate contained, among other 
things, the ancient palace at Budapest, covering, 
with its park, a site of several acres in the most 
fashionable section of the city, and harbouring 
treasures of art second to no other private collec- 
tion in Europe. One of the inhabitants of the 
palace was a ghost. Count Louis Batthany, a rela- 
ation of the Karolyi family, had been Premier of 
the first parliamentary ministry of Hungary, 
a patriot of the purest water, a statesman of 
parts and of moderation. In the revolution of 
1848 Count Batthyany held out, at the jeopardy 
of his own popularity, for reconciliation with the 
dynasty. It availed him nothing. When the 
Austrians retook Budapest after the flight of 
Kossuth's government to Debreczen, Batthyany, 
who saw no reason why he should flee, was im- 
prisoned, courtmartialled and shot to death. He 
was arrested in the Karolyi Palace. The Austrian 
general who ordered his arrest was Prince Alfred 
Windischgraetz. These two details are not un- 
important. 

The Magyar nobility is noted for three qualities 
above others — its extravagant splendour, its dash, 
and its wonderful physique. The splendour is an 
oriental heritage. The dash is reminiscent of the 
aristocracy of Louis XIV., called by Macaulay — 



168 EMINENT EUROPEANS 

hardly a favourably predisposed critic — the gal- 
lantest class in history; of the marquesses and 
chevaliers who, clothed in gorgeous silks and 
snowy laces, perfumed and periwigged, charged 
into the squares of Marlborough's infantry with 
the nonchalance of a cavalcade at Versailles. The 
physical beauty of the Magyar nobility is the 
mark of pure though not inbred stock, and 
the result of centuries of outdoor life, cultivated 
in Hungary very much in the English fashion. 
The Magyar aristocracy probably numbers more 
flawlessly handsome men than any save the 
English, and more devastatingly beautiful women 
than any other whatsoever. 

In Michael Karolyi the type of Magyar aristo- 
crat was somewhat modified. He was well-built, 
tall and lithe — good-looking withal, but not exactly 
handsome by the high standards of his race. If he 
inherited the oriental tendency for extravagant dis- 
play, it was mitigated in him by his intimate con- 
tact with the West, where he not only travelled 
and amused himself — that his cousins did, too — but 
also saw and learned. But if he had less of these 
two qualities than his fellows, the lack was com- 
pensated for by an excess of the third — of dash. 
From his adolescence he was known for a reckless- 
ness verging almost on madness. His stunts on 
horseback and at the motor wheel were the talk of 
a society where physical prowess is taken for 
granted. And his feats as a gambler attracted 
notice in a milieu where forty-eight-hour baccarat 



COUNT MICHAEL KAROLYI 169 

or poker battles with "pots" running into a quarter 
million dollars were not infrequent. 

But if he possessed this attribute of his class to 
an excess, he also possessed another quality which 
marked him off the rest. Intellectual curiosity is 
not one of the virtues of the Magyar aristocracy. 
Had Matthew Arnold written of Hungary instead 
of England, he wouldn't have had to change much 
his description of the barbarians. 

There were members of the Magyar nobility who 
won for themselves honourable places in the history 
of Magyar culture. There was the Baron Valen- 
tine Balassa, singer and humanist of the sixteenth 
century; there was Count Nicholas Zrinyi, epic 
poet and military writer, in the seventeenth. The 
most remarkable figure of the Magyar spiritual 
risorgimento in the first half of the nineteenth cen- 
tury was Count Stephen Szechenyi, publicist, 
economist, historian, called by his great enemy 
Kossuth "the greatest Magyar." The most im- 
portant of Magyar novelists is the sombre pupil 
of Balzac, the Transylvanian Baron Sigismund 
Kemeny; the leading exponent of the English lib- 
eral school was Baron Joseph Eotvos, politician, 
humanitarian and writer of historic romances. But 
herewith the list of names contributed by the Mag- 
yar nobility to Magyar culture is exhausted: and 
these men had to fight as their bitterest opponents 
their own class and kin. With all their European 
manners, with their linguistic gifts, with their smat- 
terings of the arts, with their polish of international 



170 EMINENT EUROPEANS 

culture so markedly in contrast with the parochial 
and patriarchal spirit of the gentry, the Magyar 
aristocracy, in its innermost soul, has remained 
savage and Asiatic, much more nakedly contemp- 
tuous of things spiritual than the corresponding 
class of other European countries. They cared 
for horses, cards, wine, women, shooting — above all, 
for horses. Their hippolatry exceeded, if possible, 
even that of the English. Their greatest represen- 
tative, the Count Stephen Szechenyi, who founded 
the Academy of Sciences, imported Western sys- 
tems of banking, and started the first steamship 
line on the Danube, also introduced horseracing on 
the English model. 

In this milieu Count Karolyi's bent toward ser- 
ious study was not only noticed but also suspected. 
He read, much and with discrimination — he was 
discovered in the act of perusing works on history, 
politics, even — horribile dictu — sociology. It 
wasn't natural. It was affectation at the best — 
sign of sinister proclivities at their worst. It was 
abnormal. But then, of course, everybody knew 
that Count Michael was abnormal. 

There is a volume of memoirs by Prince Ludwig 
Windischgraetz, the friend of the late Emperor 
Charles, who during the latter part of the War 
was Food Minister in Hungary. His grandfather 
was the Austrian Field Marshal who in January, 
1849, had Michael Karolyi's relative, the "rebel" 
Count Louis Batthyany, arrested at the Karolyi 
Palace. His father, also a General, settled in 



COUNT MICHAEL KAROLYI 171 

Hungary and married a Countess Dessewffy, 
of old Magyar stock. Ludwig Windischgraetz, 
scion of an ancient Austrian house, was raised on 
a Hungarian estate as a Magyar of Magyars. He 
was a clever, restless youth with more than average 
courage and more than average imagination — with 
tremendous ambition and a whole assortment of 
amateurish abilities blending into an aura of vague 
brilliancy. He hunted lions in Africa, fought 
gangsters on the lower East Side of New York, 
was an attache in the Russo-Japanese war, acted, 
in the disguise of first a mechanic, then a waiter, 
as a spy of the Austrian General Staff in Serbia. 
At the beginning of the war, he rode, at the head 
of a reconnoitring party of half a dozen dragoons, 
through the lines of a whole Serbian army. As 
Food Minister he displayed great industry and re- 
sourcefulness, and when all was over he cahnly 
walked across the Swiss frontier with twelve mil- 
lion kronen of Hungarian state funds in his 
pocket. As this sum was originally intended for 
the purchase of potatoes, he is now familiarly 
known in the Danubian region as the Potato 
Prince. 

His book is extremely interesting, though ram- 
bling and unven. It has two main themes, or leit- 
motivs. Showing what a political and military 
genius he was himself is one ; showing what a black- 
hearted scoundrel his cousin Michael Karolyi was 
is the other. Its interminable loosely-written pages 
of self-praise and irrelevant detail are illuminated, 



172 EMINENT EUROPEANS 

here and there, by the lightning of a first-rate epi- 
gram, or the unforgettable flashlight picture of a 
character or a scene. It is an extremely unreliable 
book — Windischgraetz must be taken with a grain 
of salt whenever he speaks of matters impersonal, 
and with tons of salt wherever he speaks of matters 
personal. He is never more personal than when 
he speaks of Michael Karolyi. 

Michael Karolyi was born with a serious defect of speech 
[he writes.] It is well known that he has a silver palate, and 
had, of course most unjustly, to put up with a good deal of 
ridicule and many slights on account of this defect when he 
left the hothouse atmosphere of his home in his youth. He 
felt this all the more because he had been very much spoilt 
by his parents, proud and haughty magnates, for whom no 
one was good enough, and who thought themselves better than 
any one else. . . . And now people were rude and cruel 
enough to elbow him aside, ignore him and look down on him 
as on an inferior being. This treatment by a pitiless world, 
and the rebuffs he received from one or other young lady of his 
own milieu whom he admired had already stung him deeply 
and left an incurable wound. 

This is a malicious sketch, introductory to a still 
more malicious account of young Karolyi's eccen- 
tricities and dissipations. But like all accomplished 
blagueurs, Windischgraetz fortifies his malice with 
ingredients of truth. It was true that Karoyli had 
a physical defect. But the consciousness of this 
defect mobilized in him a compensation mechanism 
that broke through to expression not only in an 
inordinate ambition, but also — as Windischgraetz 
himself, with a rather self-conscious gesture of fair 



COUNT MICHAEL KAROLYI 173 

play, admits — in an extraordinary will to and 
capacity for work. 

Ill 

He was still in his twenties when he inherited his 
uncle's vast fortune. He also inlierited, as it were, 
his uncle's position as chairman of the Agricultural 
Society, the most powerful economic organization 
in the country — the phalanx of junker interests, a 
second government, a state within the Hungarian 
state. It was not long before Michael Karolyi 
threw away his inherited career, — just as a few 
years later he threw away his inherited fortune. 

The break did not occur without preliminaries. 
Young Karolyi had first hit on a path that led so 
many of his betters to their ruin. He discovered 
the most dangerous of drugs, at once a stimulant 
and a narcotic. He began to work. 

He set to work [continues Windischgraetz] with extraordi- 
nary diligence to retrieve what he had left undone; he braced 
up his muscles, studied agriculture, history and social economy, 
learnt to ride and fence, showed marvellous tenacity in trying 
to master his defect of speech, threw himself into politics, 
and was successful in every direction. He could say with 
pride that he had given himself new birth at the age of thirty. 
He had acquired knowledge; an iron will impelled him to do 
what was beyond his strength; ambition, pride and love of 
power led him into extremes, eccentricities and absurdities. 
He was never a good motorist, but he drove with a foolhardi- 
ness that made one nervous and anxious; never a good rider, 
but he played polo with amazing courage; he could not speak, 
and made speeches which compelled respect and admiration. 
Michael Karolyi began to show who Michael Karolyi was. 



174 EMINENT EUROPEANS 

An excellent, though chronologically over-con- 
densed account of the Karolyi in this particular 
period. Also, a good instance of the way in which 
Windischgraetz, anything but a fool, disguises his 
individual dislike and class prejudice as begrudg- 
ing admiration. For Karolyi's seriousness, his pas- 
sionate quest for knowledge was looked upon 
askance by his fellow-aristocrats from the outset. 
His behaviour was highly unprofessional. He was 
a blackleg. He worked. 

He worked on. He was member by hereditary 
right of the House of Magnates; but in Hungary 
nobles possessed of political ambition usually 
availed themselves of their privilege to renounce, 
temporarily, their seats in the Upper Chamber and 
sought election to the Lower. The reason was 
obvious. The Magyar Upper House resembled 
nothing so much as City Hall Square, New York, 
on a sunny May afternoon — a band of profes- 
sional unemployed sleeping on benches, and in a 
corner a fakir reciting in a deadly drone some- 
thing no one paid any attention to. What if the 
loafers in the gorgeous Gothic palace on the Dan- 
ube wore frock coats, monocles and gardenias, and 
the benches were of wine-red velvet — the essence of 
the two scenes was the same. 

Karolyi got himself elected to the House of 
Representatives, the real law-making body, and 
joined the Opposition without officially attaching 
himself to any party. 

The name of the Prime Minister whom Karolyi 



COUNT MICHAEL KAROLYI 175 

opposed was Count Stephen Tisza. One cannot 
understand Karolyi without knowing something of 
Tisza; one cannot understand Hungary without 
knowing a good deal of Tisza. Stephen Tisza is 
the summary of a period; he is a chapter of Cen- 
tral European history. 

Was Tisza a great man? If indomitable courage, 
an iron will and a contempt for petty personal ad- 
vantage and comfort constitute greatness, he was. 
If unswerving devotion to an ideal is greatness, 
he was. If, however, in addition to these qualities, 
imaginative sympathy, a constructive understand- 
ing of human needs, be required; if the value 
of devotion be determined by the quality of the 
object it serves, he was not great. For he lacked 
imaginative sympathy and constructive understand- 
ing. Not that he was stupid — far from it. He had 
keenness though without depth ; he had a good deal 
of legalistic shrewdness; he had mental dash, a 
kind of dauntless intellectual horsemanship, which 
also implied that he regarded difficulties more as 
hurdles to clear than as problems to solve. 

He was, unquestionably, a personality and more 
than a personality. He was a statue, carven in 
black marble, of the fate of his race — an outpost 
of Central Asiatic horsemen thrown by some dark 
remote upheaval into a strange clime and left there 
to perish or be adapted — or rather to perish by 
adaptation. In his heart of hearts Tisza knew that 
his nation could survive only in measure with its 
power to lose its identity. He hated Europe, the 



176 EMINENT EUROPEANS 

West; he hated the twentieth century. At bottom 
this sternest and most ruthless of Realpolitiker was 
a dreamer and a sentimentahst. 

But courage he had; and faith. His faith was 
in his own race, a race of tall, dark, lithe Turkish 
warriors turned Calvinist; and in himself. He be- 
lieved that his race was sent to rule the land of its 
fathers and the riffraff of Slavs and Roumanians 
whose fathers had been indiscreet enough to be on 
the spot when the Magyar supermen arrived, or 
foolhardy enough to sneak in afterward. And he 
believed that he was sent to rule and save this race. 

He was tall and gaunt, with a slight stoop, 
angular of figure and motion; his face was sallow, 
he had his hair cropped close, and wore dark un- 
gainly clothes. He had large eyes ordinarily of a 
somewhat owlish expression, but occasionally con- 
tracting into the quick flash of an eagle's glance. 
He usually wore darkened glasses, and for a time he 
was threatened by loss of his eyesight. Through 
those grey glasses of his he saw this world as an 
unmovable gigantic pattern of good and evil — he 
derived his fatalism, his belief in predestination, 
both from the ancestral plains of the Oxus and from 
Geneva. 

In his scheme of things Good was represented 
by the Magyar "historic classes," meaning the aris- 
tocracy and gentry, and by everything conducive to 
the power and safety of those classes: autocratic 
government, militarism in general and Prussian 
militarism in particular, property, especially landed 



COUNT MICHAEL KAROLYI 177 

property, still more entailed property; strict disci- 
pline in education for the children of the select few, 
and strict discipline without education for the 
children of the motley many. Evil was represented 
by whatever tended to oppose or endanger the 
supremacy of the Magyar historic classes : persons, 
things and principles like democracy, the non- 
Magyar races of Hungary, intellectuals, liberals, 
Jews other than the bankers who lent money to his 
government; Socialists; popular education; Serbia; 
Russia ; the Archduke Francis Ferdinand ; freedom 
of the press ; and the effeminate French, the allies of 
Russia. Curiously enough, in the days before the 
war he used to speak well of England. He admired 
English legal tradition and the aristocratic features 
of the English constitution. He was a Conservative, 
but an eighteenth century Whig Conservative 
rather than a Tory, for what he feared more than 
anything else was a rapj^rochement and alliance 
between the Crown and the Masses as against the 
Classes. A fanatic Magyar and Calvinist, he did 
not like the Hapsburgs, but he was their faithful 
servant nevertheless. In his loyalty to his race-idol 
he swallowed even the Hapsburgs, for they were 
useful in keeping the dirty Slavs and unspeakable 
Roumanians in their place. 

His physical prowess was admirable. He was a 
first-class horseman, a master swordsman, and 
before his eyes began to trouble him an excellent 
shot. His moral courage was that of his opinions. 
He did not conceal his manifold contempts and 



178 EMINENT EUROPEANS 

prejudices — he boasted of them. They were the 
scales of an armour behind which he defied the 
twentieth centurj^ in terms of the fifteenth. He was 
a junker, but not a hypocrite. He had no use for 
the efficiency devices, the quasi-humanitarian allure- 
ments of Prussian junkerdom. He did not believe 
in the scientific method and in bribing people into 
submission by social betterment as in Germany. 
His fathers used the whip, and when the whip 
ceased to work the sabre ; and these means of politi- 
cal suasion seemed good enough for him, much 
better than factory hygiene legislation and mini- 
mum wages and compulsory bathrooms for tene- 
ments and other new-fangled Prussian nonsense. 

If he ever was afraid of anything it was that the 
King and the people — plebs, not populus — might 
get together. That's why he hated the Heir to the 
Throne with such unrelenting hatred — he knew that 
Francis Ferdinand planned to establish and en- 
trench autocracy by strictly democratic methods. 
Something of the sort had already been attempted 
in Austria where universal suffrage, introduced by 
imperial decree, was used to break the back of Ger- 
man and Czech political cliques, although with 
little success. 

But if he was afraid of Francis Joseph plus the 
people, Francis Joseph was afraid of Imn, without 
bothering much about the people. It would be, 
perhaps, an exaggeration to say that Francis 
Joseph trembled before Tisza; he was too much of 
a gentleman to tremble before any one. But it is 




COUNT STEPHEN TISZA 



COUNT MICHAEL KAROLYI 179 

a fact, testified to by the few who knew him well, 
that in his latter years the old Monarch could not 
confront an emergency without asking himself 
first — ''Was wird der Tisza dazu sagen?'' 

Tisza's political strategy was simple. It could be 
visualised by that emblem of simplicity and of com- 
pleteness — and hopelessness : a circle. It was based 
on the fact that the Crown — Francis Joseph, that 
is, — had one ideal : that of the Great Power. Now, 
to bring the thing down to its crudest terms, Tisza 
reasoned thus: "To maintain the status of a Great 
Power the King needs two things; recruits and 
taxes. If I supply him with these two, he will give 
me a free hand in Hungary to defend Magyar su- 
premacy. Defending Magyar supremacy means 
oppressing Slavs and Roumanians; it also means 
fleecing the Magyar peasantry. But Slavs and 
Roumanians resent the oppression, and will foment 
conspiracies against the Magyar State with their 
kin across the frontier. In time the Magyar peas- 
antry, too, will resent the fleecing, and will turn 
Socialist. Meanwhile, however, I can utilize the 
Slav and Roumanian resentment by telling the 
Magyar people that it must give me more soldiers 
and taxes — otherwise the Slavs and Roumanians 
will rise and devour them. I get my soldiers and 
taxes, and give them to the King, and he gives me 
a free hand in Hungary, and the whole begins 
da capo" 

In other words, oppression was convenient not 
only because it oppressed, but also because it was 



180 EMINENT EUROPEANS 

self -perpetuating ; it produced its own machinery. 
The more there was of oppression, the more soldiers 
could be obtained; the more there was of soldiers, 
the easier it was to oppress. 

It was one of the most vicious circles in modern 
history, and it was called "maintenance of Magyar 
hegemony." 

Yet Tisza was no hypocrite. When he said "we, 
the Magyar nation" or even "we, the Magyar 
people" he meant to say, gens Hungarica, or 
populus Hungaricus — terms that in ancient Mag- 
yar usage excluded Magyar serfs and all non- 
Magyars, whether serfs or freemen. Gens and 
populus were the "historic classes" ; the rest — Slavs, 
Vlachs, peasants, Jews and intellectuals, formed the 
plehs. 

The old Liberal party, so-called because it had 
secured emancipation of the Jews, and founded by 
Tisza's father, returned to power after an inter- 
regnum of five years in 1910, rebaptized Party of 
National Work. Tisza soon resumed what he 
called the policy of the Strong Hand — his termi- 
nology was as forceful as his ideas were crude. He 
introduced a new Army Bill, providing for larger 
contingents of men and money than ever before. 
The opposition besieged the bill by what in Magyar 
parliamentary idiom was called technical obstruc- 
tion. It consisted in utilizing the Standing Kules 
for stopping business. Every member was entitled 
to make a speech of unlimited length on each 
reading of a bill. He could take the floor any 



COUNT MICHAEL KAROLYI 181 

number of times as a matter of "personal privilege" 
when he felt himself attacked or slighted by any- 
other member. He could interpellate the Ministers, 
and rejoin to their replies. At the end of a debate 
he was entitled to "closing remarks." No doubt it 
was an awful nuisance, this technical obstruction, 
the methods of which were developed to utmost 
finesse by the Magyar parliamentarians, greatest 
sticklers in the world for legal niceties. 

Tisza first tried to break the deadlock by manipu- 
lating the Standing Rules. This was the reign of 
a figurative Strong Hand. It did not work. Then 
the Strong Hand grew physical — and effective. 

One day Tisza instituted a parliamentary guard, 
in substance a detail of the regular army. It was 
in flagrant violation of every parliamentary by-law 
and tradition. It also turned the trick as desired. 
The guards — they had beautiful uniforms of the 
best Magyar historic pattern — invaded the floor of 
the House, dragged the recalcitrant Opposition 
leaders to the lobby, and kicked them down the 
stairs to the street. 

By this coup d'etat Tisza made himself the virtual 
dictator of the country. Henceforth until the very 
end of the war — and of Austria-Hungary — parlia- 
mentarism was a farce in Hungary not only in 
substance, but also in form. 

Prince Windischgraetz, an implacable though re- 
spectful enemy of Tisza in a later period, was prior 
to this coup an ardent partisan of the Premier. 
We are indebted to him for two snapshots. One is 



182 EMINENT EUROPEANS 

from the eve of the electoral victory of 1910. Tisza 
asked some friends, Windischgraetz included, to 
dine with him in a private room of the Hotel 
Hungaria at Budapest. A gipsy band was playing. 

When I arrived, [writes Windischgjaetz] Tisza was stand- 
ing in his shirtsleeves in front of the conductor, who was 
fiddling away with his orchestra for bare life, and dancing. 
Tisza was dancing. There were no women present, only my- 
self and the two or three other men of the party, but Tisza, 
the grey-haired old man — he was past fifty at that time, the 
highest official in the land. Prime Minister — was dancing, lost 
in thought, speechless, bewitched, and fired by the rhythms 
which are the breath of life to Hungarians. We sat in a 
corner and ate and drank and talked interminably. Only 
Tisza danced. Alone, for four whole hours without inter- 
mission, engrossed in the thoughts the gipsy music set in his 
Hungarian brain. Now and again he looked at the conductor 
with his large eyes — the dark gipsy instantly divined what 
was wanted, changed the key, started another and yet another 
song, always a Hungarian song. . . . 

The other picture is dated 1914. Early in the 
spring of that year the extreme political tension 
which followed the curbing of the opposition by the 
means described above was relieved, for the partici- 
pants of the game at least, in a series of political 
duels fought by Count Tisza with various leaders 
of the Opposition. He fought Windischgraetz's 
father-in-law Count Szechenyi, the brothers-in-law 
Marquis Pallavicini and Michael Karolyi, and 
others. 

But the most interesting duel [relates Windischgraetz] was 



COUNT MICHAEL KAROLYI 183 

the one with the former President of the House of Deputies, 
Stephen Rakovszky, an old adversary with whom he had al- 
ready crossed swords twice. It took place in a fencing saloon 
in the town. Baron Vojnits and Baron Uechtritz seconded 
Tisza, Pallavicini and I seconded Rakovszky. The pugnacious 
old fellows — both were already past sixty, this is what was 
so remarkable — attacked one another furiously. They fought 
one round after another. Blood poured down their bodies and 
over their brows and arms from cuts and slight wounds ; but 
still they fell on one another again and again, and fought 
eleven rounds, puffing and blowing, till at last both laid down 
their arms, exhausted and disabled. (Old Rakovszky would 
not be dissuaded from going to the front, a few months later, 
as a Lieutenant. He rode meekly in the squadron of the 6th 
Dragoons commanded by his son, who was a Captain. It is 
well known that Tisza also spent some time in the trenches 
as a Colonel. Hungary. . . .) 

IV 

Karolyi's enemies, led by Windischgraetz, sneer 
at him because, as they say, he turned radical under 
the influence of the thrashing administered by 
Tisza's soldiers on the floor of Parliament. One 
does not see why drawing a lesson from a painful 
experience should be discreditable; as a matter of 
fact, however, the assertion isn't true. There is the 
testimony of Oscar Jaszi,* the brilliant intellectual 
leader of Young Hungary, a close friend and yet 

* Oscar Jaszi was the founder of the Hungarian Society of 
Sociology and of the leading Hungarian monthly review, the Twen- 
tieth Century. Before and throughout the war he championed 
democratic reform and the full emancipation of the Subject Races. 
He was Minister of National Minorities in the Government of Count 
Karolyi, and went into exile after the Communist upheaval. At 
present he lives in Vienna. The following quotations are from his 



184 EMINENT EUROPEANS 

an impartial analyst of Karolyi, to the effect that 
weeks prior to the coup Karolyi was already the 
soul and leader of the Opposition. It was he who 
frustrated every attempt at petty compromise, at 
hushing up and passing over things — baleful 
methods of Magyar politics. Not physical, but 
moral blows, savs Jaszi, swept Karolyi, the con- 
servative aristocrat, into the camp of democracy. 
Jaszi records a conversation Karolyi had with Mr. 
Julius Justh, ex-Speaker of the House, at the dis- 
cussed period Chairman of the Independence Party 
and former Speaker of the House. 

Tisza has destroyed my entire political past [Karolyi had 
told Mr. Justh], I can see now that the ancient, much-vaunted 
Hungarian Constitution is nothing but a mirage. There was 
no people behind it. You can put over anything on this con- 
stitution. If tomorrow they should want to establish Greater 
Austria, or a military dictatorship, all they have to do is to 
despatch another Tisza, and they will obtain anything from 
this Parliament. It is a body without a will, a decayed body. 
The only thing that can save us today is a Pariament of the 
people. The national cause must be linked with the cause of 
democracy. 

"The national cause must be linked with the cause 
of democracy" — that was a new note in Hungarian 
politics, a note contributed by Count Michael 
Karolyi. Hitherto the national cause, championed 
by the Opposition, signified independence from 

excellent book "Magyar Calvary — Magyar Resurrection," published 
in Hungarian at Vienna, 1921. It is the only reliable source dealing 
with the two Hungarian revolutions, those of October, 1918, and 
March, 1919. 



COUNT MICHAEL KAROLYI 185 

Austria, or at least more through separation; it 
signified a Magyar court at Budapest — or at least 
one for six months of the year; Magyar language 
of command and Magyar emblems for the army; 
and Magyar diplomatic representatives abroad 
equalling in number those of Austrian birth. The 
most substantial of the national demands was for a 
separate customs frontier from Austria, and a sepa- 
rate Hungarian bank of issue. 

Though its upholders spoke all the time of the 
"People" as against the "Court," this Opposition 
was oligarchic in its character none the less than the 
Governmental party. The two had each a numeral 
for a battle cry. That of the Opposition was 1848, 
the year of the revolution and separation from 
Austria. The Governmental party had 1867 on its 
banner — the year of the Compromise with Austria 
and the dynasty, ending the struggle that had begun 
in 1848. Roughly speaking, 1867 was the party of 
the large landowners, Jewish high finance, and the 
Budapest bourgeoisie, 1848 that of the middle and 
small landowners, the Calvinist clergy, the 
burgesses of smaller cities, and such peasants as 
had the property qualification for franchise. 

Historically, the cleavage was the modern con- 
tinuation of the four hundred year old division 
between the pro-Hapsburg, Imperialist, Catholic, 
lahancz party, and the Nationalist and Calvinist 
party that looked for leadership to the independent 
Princes of Transylvania, the Kuruczes (cruciati) of 
Rakoczi's time. 



186 EMINENT EUROPEANS 

Democracy had nothing to do with the pro- 
gramme of the Nationals except as an electioneer- 
ing cry. Now, in Hungary the chief demand of 
democracy was for universal suffrage with secret 
ballot, — as governmental power rested on the high 
property qualification for the vote, a system of 
gerrymandering and of pocket boroughs, as well as 
on terrorism made easy by open polling. For 
some time past universal suffrage was a plank of 
the Opposition platform; but nobody took it 
very seriously. In 1905 the Crown tried to put 
over the Austrian experiment and establish uni- 
versal suffrage by decree. The plan was wrecked 
by the autonomous municipal system of Hungary, 
whereby the County assemblies could withhold 
taxes and refuse to carry out ministerial measures. 
A general election followed, which gave an 
overwhelming victory to the Coalition of the Op- 
position parties, chief of which was the Indepen- 
dence Party. This was the first time since 
1848 that the Nationals obtained a majority 
over the Court party, and everybody expected 
the immediate establishment of the Millennium. 
To that the first step was universal suffrage. 
However, the Coalition, once safely in the saddle, 
broke every pledge and sat down to such unmiti- 
gated revelry of corruption and reaction that by 
1910 popular indignation returned with a land- 
slide the old Liberal Party, led by Count Tisza 
and revamped as the Party of National Work. 

For Tisza universal suffrage was a contrivance of 



COUNT MICHAEL KAROLYI 187 

the Evil One himself. Throughout his career runs 
as a leitmotiv his bitter-ender antagonism to the 
enfranchisement of the masses. He perceived, 
rightly, that universal suffrage meant the end of 
Magyar supremacy in Hungary in the political 
sense, for it would give the Slav and Roumanian 
majority of the population adequate representation 
in Parliament.* It would also mean the end of 
Magyar supremacy in the economic sense — for in 
Tisza's mind Magyar supremacy was identical with 
the system of big landed estates held in entail ; and 
he knew that the first thing a parliament elected on 
the basis of universal suffrage would enact would be 
a radical land reform law. Here, indeed, was the 
kernel of the whole problem. Stripped from its 
romantic trappings of race superiority and historic 
mission and all that sort of thing Magyar 
supremacy meant monopoly of land. 

Now the same complex of reasons and considera- 
tions and sub-conscious currents of sentiment as 
prompted Tisza to oppose universal suffrage with 
a fervour recalling the atmosphere of religious con- 
troversy in seventeenth-century Scotland made his 
opponents sabotage the cause of suffrage by a half- 
hearted support and equivocal lipservice more 
damaging than open antagonism. Apart from a 
few true old-fashioned Radicals in the English 
sense like Mr. Justh, at heart the leaders of the In- 

* The non-Magyar races formed a little over 50 per cent, of the 
population. They never gained more than three or four per cent, 
of the seats in the House of Representatives under the old suffrage 
and division of constituencies. 



188 EMINENT EUROPEANS 

dependence party and the other Opposition factions 
were ohgarchs, too; but unlike Tisza, they lacked 
the courage of their convictions. 

The real support of universal suffrage came, up 
to the challenge sounded by Karolyi, from three 
groups. There were the intellectual radicals and 
Fabian Sociahsts of Budapest, organized in the 
Society of Sociology and the Galilei Club under the 
brilhant but somewhat, necessarily, academic lead- 
ership of Oscar Jaszi. There were the trade unions 
of Budapest, weak but growing. And there were 
the oppressed nationalities, Slovaks, Serbo-Croats 
and Roumanians. Of these three groups only the 
last had representation in Parliament, and that was 
a diminutive one. 



Karolyi's declaration, "The national cause must 
be linked with the demands of democracy" was a 
challenge not only to the Right, the party of Tisza, 
but also to the oligarchic elements of the Opposi- 
tion. It was a declaration of war on tyranny and 
humbug alike. From that moment onward Karolyi 
had to face his former comrades-at-arms within 
the Independence Party, the moderates following 
Count Albert Apponyi and Francis Kossuth, a 
well-meaning nonentity, son of the great Kossuth, 
with the old programme of national salad-dressing: 
red, white, green porte-epees for officers instead 



COUNT MICHAEL KAROLYI 189 

of gold and black, Magyar coat-of-arms for the 
consulates at Port Said and Timbuctoo, and Mag- 
yar language of command for the army. Oh yes — 
the programme also included the demand for ex- 
tension of the suffrage. Of the senior leaders only 
Mr. Justh went with Karolyi. 

Agitation for democratic reform now began in 
earnest. There were agricultural strikes in the 
country, industrial strikes and demonstrations at 
Budapest, dealt with by Tisza's well-known 
methods. The Strong Hand was reinforced by the 
machine gun. The general bitterness was enhanced 
by the mobilization orders following upon one 
another in the course of the Balkan wars of 1912- 
1913. The spectre of a war with Russia loomed up 
on the northern horizon. 

VI 

It was in the period of the anti- Serbian measures 
of the government — opposition to the reasonable 
Serbian demand for an Adriatic port, and the em- 
bargo on Serbia's most important export, pigs — 
that Karolyi conceived a stratagem that was as 
much of a new departure as his idea of linking the 
national cause with the demands of democracy. 
The stratagem consisted of extending the internal 
battlefront to the field of international affairs. 

Up to this time Magyar politics was funda- 
mentally provincial. The joint Foreign Minister 
of Austria-Hungary was not responsible directly to 



190 EMINENT EUROPEANS 

either the Magyar Parliament or the Austrian 
Reichsrat, but to the so-called Delegations, in effect 
committees elected j^early by the two legislatures 
for the discussion of appropriations of the Joint 
Ministries — War, Foreign Affairs and Bosnia- 
Herzegovina. Consequently foreign policy was 
hardly ever discussed in the House of Representa- 
tives, so much the less as it was easy for the Prime 
Minister to dodge interpellations by pleading "no 
jurisdiction" and referring to the Delegations. 

Moreover — and no more convincing proof of the 
utter superficiality and gingerbread character of 
Hungarian political life is needed — there was in 
"respectable" political circles no real interest in 
foreign affairs. The Triple Alliance (engineered 
by a Magyar statesman, Count Julius Andrassy the 
elder) was the unquestioned, God-ordained basis 
of everything happening outside the boundaries of 
the Dual Monarchy. A good Magyar was sup- 
posed to admire Prussian efficiency and honesty 
(as opposed to Austrian sloth and craftiness), to 
hate Russia, to despise all other Slavs except Poles, 
to detest Roumanians, to have a sort of sentimental 
weakness for the Turks in their capacity of victims 
of Slav imperialism, and for the rest, to give vent 
to such libido as citizens of other countries are wont 
to expend on international politics in endless 
harangues against the Austrian partner of the busi- 
ness. 

Magyar nationalists insisted that the Hungarian 
coat-of-arms should adorn embassies together with 



COUNT MICHAEL KAROLYI 191 

the double-headed eagle of Austria. Whatever 
went on inside the embassies thus adorned was im- 
material. Intelligent discussion of world affairs 
was restricted to the radicals of the Jaszi group ; but 
these were not represented in Parliament, and were 
regarded by respectable God-fearing Magyars as 
cranks at best, traitors at worst. 

The Balkan wars brought a change. There was 
shooting at the door, and a few people awoke and 
rubbed their eyes. The realization dawned on 
Hungarian public opinion that foreign politics may 
be, after all, a vital matter. It was understood that 
Turkey's defeat was a blow to German-Austro- 
Hungarian interests : that the victory of the Balkan 
alliance was a Russian victory. Tisza's Army 
Bills, and the expense, inconvenience and uneasi- 
ness of mobilization suggested the possibility of a 
subtle connection between the stakes of high 
diplomacy and the everyday routine of the man in 
the street. 

For the average Hungarian M. P. the intellectual 
adventure did not proceed beyond this point. But 
Michael Karolyi was not an average M. P. Of 
course he had known before this what was going on 
in the world ; but now, all of a sudden, he drew the 
obvious inference of his knowledge. It was a 
revelation — a twofold one. German policy was 
making for war : Hungary needed peace — therefore 
the German alliance was a bad thing for Hungary. 
But the German alliance depended on Tisza and the 
oligarchy — and Tisza depended on the German 



192 EMINENT EUROPEANS 

alliance. Tisza's Army Bill and strong hand 
methods, the withholding of democratic reform, the 
suppression of Slavs and Roumanians, the embargo 
on Serbian pigs — all the things that had hitherto 
completely filled the Magyar political horizon, now 
shrank to a mere sector of the gigantic curve Berhn- 
Bagdad. 

So far it was all reasoning. The next step was 
action. If "Tisza — militarism — oligarchy" meant 
Germany, the natural allies of Magyar democracy 
were the enemies of Germany. Karolyi conceived 
the idea of seeking moral support against Tisza at 
Paris and Petrograd. 

The idea was novel only in its application. 
Historically the co-operation of the Magyar anti- 
court party with the enemies of the Hapsburgs was 
an obvious and frequently invoked policy. In the 
first half of the seventeenth century Gabriel Bethlen 
and George Rakoczi, Princes of Transylvania, were 
the allies of the Porte and of Sweden. During the 
war of the Spanish Succession Prince Francis 
Rakoczi II was the ally of Louis XIV. In 
the nineteenth century, Kossuth sought contact 
first with the German liberals, then with Napoleon 
III and Piedmont. Magyar legions fought in the 
army of Italia Unita. 

Nevertheless Karolyi's risk was tremendous. One 
of the few things in which Hungarians, most 
factious of peoples, agreed was their hatred of 
Russia. A politician caught in having relations 
with Petrograd exposed himself to moral death and 



COUNT MICHAEL KAROLYI 193 

even to criminal prosecution. Trials for high 
treason were to be had cheaply in Hungary. But 
Karolyi was not the man to shirk the right course 
because it involved personal danger. 



Once landing on the shores of Western democracy, [writes 
Professor Jaszi] for a personality like Karoyli there was no 
hesitancy, no turning back. He drew the conclusions of his 
new standpoint with a passionate logic — yes, if you will, 
with the elan and ruthlessness of the sportsman and gambler. 
For Philistinedom was right in its instinctive recognition that 
the core of Karolyi's character was the sportsman and the 
gambler in him. Philistinedom was wrong only in condemning 
him on that score. There is a fundamental energy, there are 
a few dominant traits in every real personality that remain 
the same whatever their channel of manifestation be, just 
as the wild torrent of the hills remains the same whether it 
rushes unbridled from cataract to cataract or is hitched to a 
sawmill or electric power station. Karolyi, the Magyar aristo- 
crat, put all his imagination, his intuition, his unswerving 
courage, his chivalry, his romanticism to the service of de- 
mocracy. It is just this adventurous element in him which 
Philistines of all kind hate so unrelentingly, the same Philis- 
tines who creep in adoration before any successful adventurer. 
Yet the great pioneers of today were the adventurers of yes- 
terday — or were not Cromwell, Napoleon, Bismarck, adven- 
turers ? 



In the spring of 1914 the first advances were 

made toward the Entente. At the same time 

Karolyi made a trip to the United States, to preach 

the cause of democratic reform to the million 

Hungarians in America. His trip was a success, of 
13 



194 EMINENT EUROPEANS 

a kind. He raised some funds and started for home. 
The outbreak of the World War found him mid- 
ocean. 

On landing in France he was detained, but 
shortly afterward released and allowed to proceed 
to Hungary. 

From the moment of his arrival at Budapest 
Karolyi conducted a passionate anti-war and anti- 
German campaign. He opposed war credits, de- 
Tianded definition of peace terms and repudiation of 
plans of conquest, denounced atrocities, attacked 
German policies on land and sea. He pointed out 
that Allied victory would mean dismemberment, 
German victory absorption by Prussia. 

In the time of the great German triumphs his 
attitude had merely the moral value of a demonstra- 
tion, of going on record. From 1917 on, when the 
clearer-minded in Hungary began to realize that 
the Central Powers could not win the war, his 
influence gained; by the summer of 1918 he was the 
rising star. All the while the authorities, egged on 
by powerful personal enemies like Prince Windisch- 
graetz and his own cousin, Count Emery Karolyi, 
did what they could to "get" him, or at least to dis- 
credit his policies. The German High Command 
detailed an intelligence officer (vulgo, spy) of 
proved ability, Major Consten, to ambush Karolyi. 
Consten offered a bribe to Karolyi's secretary, who 
took it and hurried to his master to report. The 
frame-up was exposed, there was a row in Parlia- 
ment, and Major Consten had to vanish from 



COUNT MICHAEL KAROLYI 195 

Budapest. The incident only served to enhance 
Karolyi's prestige. 

In October, 1918, Austria-Hungary collapsed. 
In the course of September, and especially after the 
Bulgarian surrender, it had become plain that in 
Hungary only Karolyi could save the situation, and 
King Charles, well-meaning as always, utterly weak 
as always, was restrained with difficulty by Win- 
dischgraetz and the Jewish pseudo-democrat and 
reactionary demagogue Vazsonyi from appointing 
Karolyi Premier. At last the appointment came; 
but it came, like the decree federalizing Austria, 
too late. When Oscar Jaszi announced from the 
balcony of the Hotel Astoria that the King had 
appointed Karolyi Prime Minister, he was inter- 
rupted by shouts from the crowd: "The King?" 
"Who is King now?" "We have no King!" "The 
Revolution appointed Karolyi!" "Long live the 
Hungarian Republic!" 

The bloodless revolution of October 30-31 swept 
King Charles aside and lifted the National Council, 
the Karolyist organization formed on the Czech and 
Jugoslav model, into power. By a single stroke the 
dreams of Hungary were achieved — the dreams 
both of independence and of democracy. Budapest 
swam in a sea of pro-Entente exultation; Wilson 
was the national hero. The Marseillaise was sung 
on the streets, in restaurants, in theatres; British 
and French officers interned in the city were cheered 
and kissed by the crowd. On those two days, had 
the Allies an army corps available at the gates of 



196 EMINENT EUROPEANS 

Budapest, it wouldn't have been able to march into 
the city — the population would have carried it 
through the streets on its shoulders. Never had a 
nation a more glorious dream of the millennium 
descended on earth than Hungary on the last day 
of October, 1918. 



VII 

Alas! the dream was to remain a dream. In his 
book Professor Jaszi presents a convincing analysis 
of the failure of the Karolyi Republic* There were 
wonderful potentialities in theory ; in practice, there 
was not half a chance. First of all, it was too late. 
Disorganization had begun at the front ; streams of 
soldiers pouring homeward, not even awaiting 
orders, brought with them the breakdown of dis- 
cipline, the sense that everything was possible and 
nothing mattered much. 

But Karolyi was too late in another respect, still 
more fatal. He wanted to preserve the old 
boundaries, the old unity of Hungary. The Mag- 
yar people would not have tolerated him for a mo- 
ment had he not promised to do so. There was in 
Karolyi and in most of his associates an honest 
desire to satisfy the oppressed nationalities by a 
liberal scheme of federal autonomy. But the 
clearest-sighted, Jaszi, for instance, knew that that 
could not be done any more. The subject races 

* See also the chapter on Admiral Horthy. 



COUNT MICHAEL KAROLYI 197 

would have accepted federalism a year earlier ; now 
they would not stop short of secession and inde- 
pendence. Jaszi, on whom devolved the thankless 
task of attempting the impossible, offered a 
cantonal solution, well knowing that it would be 
rejected. It was. He then suggested a plebiscite in 
every country where over 50 per cent of the popula- 
tion was other than Magyar. This, too, was 
rejected. The Slovaks and Roumanians were 
engaged in the delectable pastime of turning the 
tables, and they were not to be cheated out of their 
pleasure. 

The impossibility of forestalling dismemberment 
alone would have predetermined Karolyi's failure; 
but he was pushed downhill from behind by the very 
Allies to whom he had rendered such important 
services, on whom he had staked all his hopes. We 
know today that it was not the Allies who changed 
suddenly ; it was Karolyi who had been deceived all 
the while, together with liberals in all lands. He had 
taken Mr. Wilson seriously. Now he was to pay the 
penalty of his gullibility. There was a whole queue 
waiting with him in front of the cashier's window; 
but no one paid a heavier price than he. 

The powder magazine of hunger, disappoint- 
ment, humiliation, general decay was there. On 
March 20, 1919, the lightning struck. On that day 
Lieutenant-Colonel Vyx, the Allied representa- 
tive, handed to Karolyi a note establishing a new 
line of demarcation, slashing territories of pure 
Magyar population off the Hungarian state. 



198 EMINENT EUROPEANS 

Colonel Vyx added orally that the new line was to 
be regarded, not as a mere armistice arrangement, 
but as the final political boundary. 

Next day the red flag was hoisted at Budapest, 
and the dictatorship of the proletariat was pro- 
claimed. 



VIII 

It is in connection with this event that the 
bitterest charges are raised against Karolyi. His 
enemies assert that he deliberately turned the 
supreme power over to Bela Kun, that he betrayed 
Hungary to the Bolshevists. Supposing this asser- 
tion were true — it would not, before the tribunal 
of history, constitute a crime in itself; for the sup- 
plementary question would have to be asked : Had 
he adequate reasons to believe that by hoisting the 
Communists into power he was doing the best pos- 
sible thing for Hungary? If the answer be in the 
affirmative, Karolyi must be acquitted. But, as a 
matter of fact, the question need not, can not, be 
asked ; for it is based on a wrong premise. Karolyi 
did not turn the country over to the Communists. 
He was not a traitor — if anything, he was betrayed. 
Whether the affair was a tragedy or a melodrama, 
Karolyi was the victim, not the villain. 

Karolyi's indictment has been spread broadcast 
before the public opinion of the world — above all, 
by Prince Windischgraetz, and the unspeakable 



COUNT MICHAEL KAROLYI 199 

French calumniators, the Brothers Tharaud. His 
defence, pubhshed in a single article by the 
Arheiter-Zeitung of Vienna on July 25, 1919, has 
been ignored so far. Its main features are presented 
below.* 

Karolyi begins by relating the events that led up 
to the fatal Cabinet Council late in the afternoon on 
March 20, 1919, and describes the presentation of 
the Allied note by Lieutenant- Colonel Vyx. He 
then proceeds : 

Lieutenant-Colonel Vyx wound up his verbal represen- 
tations by saying that unless he received an absolute ac- 
ceptance by 6 p. m. on the following day, March 21st, the 
Allied missions would leave Budapest at once. This last 
statement could only be interpreted as the threat of a new 
state of war, 

I at once replied to Lieut.-Col. Vyx to the effect that his 
demands were unfulfillable as they implied further grave 
mutilations of Magyar territory, mutilations gravely infring- 
ing on both the letter and spirit of the Belgrade armistice 
agreement;** they rob us of territories of ancient Magyar 
settlement, and render the economic reconstruction of the 
country totally impossible. The conditions, I said, were so 
much less acceptable as the short term of the French ulti- 
matum (twenty-four hours) and the immediate dismember- 
ment of the country precluded consultation of the people. 

Then I continued my address to the Cabinet Council. I 
realized, I said, that the position of the Coalition govern- 
ment had become untenable, as the bourgeois parties had 
forfeited all moral support of the country, so terribly humili- 

* These extracts are translated, not from the original article 
written by Count Karolyi in German, but from a Hungarian transla' 
tion included in Professor Jaszi's book. 

** Concluded with General Franchet d'Esperey. 



200 EMINENT EUROPEANS 

ated nationally. Only a purely Socialist government could 
maintain law and order under these circumstances. The fact 
was that for months the actual power had been in the hands 
of the trade unions. If we were to refuse the murderous 
demands of the Entente, we needed a disciplined army. Such 
disciplined army could be formed, in this period of economic 
crisis and class warfare to the knife (Communist risings were 
the order of the day) by the Social Democratic Party alone. 
... In any event, only a purely Socialist government could 
maintain itself in the face of the constant attacks of the 
Communists, attacks growing keener and more ruthless every 
day ; for under the present Coalition the Communists were 
in the position to accuse the Social Democrats of being the 
mercenaries of the bourgeoisie. 

Such a Socialist government, I continued, would be sup- 
ported even by the bourgeoisie in its defence of the country 
against imperialistic raids, and in the maintenance of law 
and order. At the same time the Socialist government would 
enjoy the support of the International as well. 

I suggested that this new Social Democratic government 
should conclude a pact with the Communists to the effect 
that while the life-and-death struggle against the imperialistic 
invaders is carried on there would be no disturbance within 
the country. . . . 

I concluded my expose by saying that I would not resign 
the Presidency of the Republic, but would insist on retain- 
ing the rudder of the State in my hands in this difficult situa- 
tion. If the Cabinet, I said, approved of my stand, I would 
on the morrow communicate with Lieut.-Colonel Vyx and 
would appoint the new Premier, who, in accordance with the 
desires of his Party, would then submit the list of the new 
Social Democratic Ministry, The rest was up to the new 
Socialist Government. 

Karolyi adds that his proposals were unani- 
mously endorsed by all Ministers present. They ac- 



COUNT MICHAEL KAROLYI £01 

cepted not only his conclusions, but also expressly 
identified themselves with his reasoning. Immedi- 
ately Premier Berinkey announced the resignation 
of the Coalition Cabinet. The Socialist Ministers 
of the retiring government, says Karolyi, empha- 
sized as a conditio sine qua non of the formation of 
a Social Democratic cabinet that he, Karolyi, must 
remain President of the Republic. 

Next day was the 21st. In the morning Karolyi 
was advised that 30,000 metal workers, the best 
organized and hitherto most conservative trade 
union, went over to the Communists as a protest 
against the Vyx note. In the afternoon the Execu- 
tive Committee of the Social Democratic Party had 
a conference. This was followed by a Council of 
the retiring Ministry. The Socialist members of 
the Cabinet did not refer with a single word to the 
proceedings of the Party Executive meeting. They 
had an interesting reason for this reticence. 

That afternoon at three o'clock, [continues Karoyli] the 
Executives of the Social Democrats concluded a pact with the 
Communists, proclaiming the fusion of the two parties and 
the formation of a Soviet government instead of the Social 
Democratic Ministry agreed upon in last night's Cabinet 
Council. Of this pact the Socialist Ministers of my Govern- 
ment said nothing, either to me or to their bourgeois 
colleagues. . . . 

The whole situation was thus settled in a sense entirely 
different from that of the Cabinet Council of the day before. 
Early in the afternoon the Council of Soldiers decided, on 
motion of its Chairman, Pogany, to support the Communists, 
and at 5 p. m. they requisitioned all available motorcars, 



202 EMINENT EUROPEANS 

including those of the Ministers. The whole garrison turned 
Communist, and when at 7 p. m. Garbai announced in the 
Workers' Council the formation of the Soviet Government, 
the power was already in the hands of the soldiers and 
sailors. Of all this I and the bourgeois members of the 
Cabinet (we were still in session) knew nothing. It was 
only afterward that Bela Kun told me that they had set 
up four pieces of artillery on Mount St. Gerald, with 
the idea of shelling the Government buildings in case of 
resistance. 

Of all this I, the President of the Republic, was not in- 
formed. Instead, after seven o'clock, when the news of the 
establishment of the Soviet was already spreading over the 
city, the chief journalistic adviser of the Communists, Paul 
Keri, confronted me with the demand that I should, in 
disregard of my previous attitude and of the Cabinet reso- 
lution of the day before, draw the conclusions of the new 
situation. 

After what had happened there was nothing for me to do 
but to resign. In order to avoid absolutely futile blood- 
shed — the only organized force in the land was that of the 
Socialists, and the entire armed establishment: the garrison, 
the People's Guard, the police, the army, were under Com- 
munistic command — I signed the proclamation announcing 
my resignation and turning over the power to the proletariat 
— the power which the proletariat had not only seized 
previously, but had also proclaimed. I preferred this sacri- 
fice to assuming the cheap martyrdom of letting them arrest 
me, because I wanted to avoid bloodshed and mass murder 
in the streets of Budapest, to spare the country from the 
worst horrors of civil war. 

This is, in brief, the true story of the proclamation of the 
Soviet Republic. I did not turn the power over to the Pro- 
letariat — the Proletariat itself had acquired the power by the 
systematic building up of a Socialist army. I had no choice. 
The alternatives were bloodshed and civil war, or bowing be- 



COUNT MICHAEL KAROLYI 203 

fore a fait accompli. I might have chosen the cheap role 
of the martyr of the bourgeoisie — it would not have cost me 
anything beyond getting arrested — but it might have cost 
Budapest hundreds of lives. 

Karolyi's narrative is endorsed by Professor 
Jaszi, himself a member of the Coahtion govern- 
ment. He arrived late at the Cabinet Council on 
March 20, and on being told of what had happened 
acceded without reservation to the decision of the 
Council. He was one of the bourgeois Ministers 
who were left unenlightened by their Socialist col- 
leagues of the Communist coup until after the event. 

Never have I felt more clearly [he writes] the power of 
the magnetic fields of the mass soul than on the fatal night 
of March 21. I beheld Karolyists, Radicals, Social Demo- 
crats, even Communists, all agreeing in those hours that it 
was impossible to submit to the brutal violence of the Vyx 
note. We knew what we had at stake. But all the misery, 
despair, humiliation of the past six months, all the baseness 
and perfidy of it, strained to the snapping point the bow of 
our bitterness. Yes, it was at a tragic conflict between the 
pacifism and political realism of our conscious mind, and the 
nationalism and instinctive sense of justice of our sub- 
conscious. 



IX 

Karolyi was downed — forgotten, for the moment, 
by the people for which he had sacrificed his all, 
betrayed by the Entente whose supporter he had 
been throughout the ordeal of five years, tricked by 



204 EMINENT EUROPEANS 

his friends and cooperators. He retired to his villa 
on the Schwabenberg, a suburb of Budapest. But 
his cup was not filled yet. 

It happened during his American trip in the 
spring of 1914 that, while addressing a mass meet- 
ing of Hungarians, he was asked by a heckler why 
he did not live up to his principles and turn over 
his vast estates to the Hungarian people. 

I will not give my estates to the Magyar people, [he an- 
swered] because I want the people to come and take them 
away. I won't give alms to my people and I won't bribe 
them. The land belongs to them by right — when they awake 
to this they'll go and seize it, and as far as I am concerned 
they are entirely welcome. 

His government never had a chance to carry out 
its project of breaking up the landed estates, the 
most important step toward the democratization of 
the country. But after he was elected President he 
offered, as a preliminary to the wholesale reform, 
his estates to the people. The establishment of 
the Soviet government found him already a poor 
man. 

Soon after the Communist coup his friends got 
wind of a conspiracy hatched by noble officers of 
the army for his assassination. Jaszi called on him 
in the garden of his Schwabenberg villa and tried 
to persuade him to leave the country. Karolyi 
listened sadly. An emaciated cow, purveyor of 
milk for the children of the ex-President, was graz- 



COUNT MICHAEL KAROLYI 205 

ing on the lawn. Jaszi looked at the cow. Karoiyi 
must have suddenly realized the symbolism of the 
scene, for he pointed at the poor beast with a bitter 
smile. "Voila," he said, "les dernieres restes d'une 
fortune jadis presque princiere." 

But even that miserable cow did not last forever. 
The Allied blockade was winding tighter and 
tighter around Soviet Hungary. Budapest was 
put on starvation rations. There was no milk in 
the city. There was no milk for the children of 
Count Michael Karoiyi, ex-President of the Repub- 
lic, but j^esterday one of the greatest feudal lords 
of Europe, recipient of a yearly income of a million 
dollars. 

Professor Philip Marshall Brown of Princeton 
University, late American charge d'affaires at Con- 
stantinople, was at this time attached to one of the 
American missions at Budapest. He liked Karoiyi 
— he admired his unselfish devotion, his idealism, his 
courage under the ordeal. One day Karoiyi came 
to him and asked for a tin or two of condensed 
milk — for his new-born baby. Professor Brown 
gave him a dozen tins, all he had at the time. He 
had tears in his eyes when he told me this story 
after his return to America. 

The first week of August, 1919, brought the 
debacle of the Soviet, and Karoiyi, who had lived in 
utter seclusion ever since March, was now hunted 
out by the victorious Whites. He, his wife and his 
children had to flee on foot, at night, pushing their 
belongings on a little cart, in constant danger of 



206 EMINENT EUROPEANS 

being caught, until they reached the Czechoslovak 
frontier and safety. The ex-President settled down 
in a little town, Gablonz, living with his family in 
two rooms of a garret. He made friends with the 
townspeople — everybody loved him and his wife, 
and when news came that the Horthy government 
had dispatched officers in disguise to murder him, 
the burghers and artisans of Gablonz organized an 
armed guard to protect their guest. 

Nevertheless Gablonz was too near the Hun- 
garian border to be a safe place for Karolyi. He 
went to Italy. But the hands of Horthy, like those 
of Ali Pasha of lanina, are long. The services of 
a female agent provocateur, one Miss Tiirr — (she 
had a personal grudge against Karolyi: she had 
asked for an appointment as publicity representa- 
tive of his government in Italy, and was refused) 
— were enlisted to implicate Karolyi in conversa- 
tions with Bolshevik refugees. One day Karolyi 
was ordered by Premier Giolitti to leave Italy. The 
Jugoslav government now offered him asylum. He 
accepted. Since the spring of 1921 Karolyi is liv- 
ing with his wife and children at Spalato, in Dal- 
matia, in utter poverty. The National Assembly 
of White Hungary passed a bill of attainder — his 
estates have been confiscated, and he is too proud to 
accept help from his friends. 

But his spirit is undaunted. He and his wife — • 
one of the most beautiful women in Europe, who 
adores him — have broken with their past com- 
pletely. In their souls, writes their friend Jaszi, 



COUNT MICHAEL KAROLYI 207 

has blossomed forth a new solidarity that links them 
with suffering, struggling humankind. "The ter- 
rible crisis which nearly killed him swung upward 
into a magnificent katharsis, out of which he passed, 
more spirited, better prepared to battle for the 
right, than ever. He believes in the cause of which 
he was the protagonist, even though he sometimes 
despairs of his personal fortunes. . . . He has 
made arrangements that should he ever be restored 
into his ancestral wealth his wife and children shall 
receive only a sum sufficient to insure a modest liv- 
ing, that of the average brain worker — the rest of 
the estates shall be turned into a foundation to 
promote social betterment and popular culture." 

Michael Karolyi and his wife, Catherine An- 
drassy, have lost all they had possessed in this world, 
but they have found a treasure that compensates 
them for their loss. They have found their souls. 
There are in Europe today no more ardent So- 
cialists than Count and Countess Michael Karolyi. 
That they are naive dogmatists ? That they expect 
the impossible? True. The early Christians were 
naive dogmatists. They expected the impossible. 
We know that Socialism is not a panacea — that 
there are no panaceas. Are we, in our sober wis- 
dom, happier than the Count and Countess Karo- 
lyi in their dream? After all, for the individual 
it is not the contents of religion that matters — it 
is religion. "Blessed are they which do hunger 
and thirst after righteousness; for they shall be 
fiUed." 



208 EMINENT EUROPEANS 

X 

Karolyi's greatest fault — one which contributed 
much to his downfall — is that he is a bad judge of 
character. He trusts people beyond the limits of 
reason. "He has something in him," writes Jaszi, 
"of Dostoevsky's Idiot, so called because he takes 
principles and men seriously with the naivete of a 
child. . . . Democracy, socialism, pacifism were for 
him, not political theories, but moral realities, tre- 
mendous live beings, as it were, persons with 
whom he maintained some sort of mystic com- 
munion. ..." 

One of the men who accompanied him on his trip 
to America was a small hardware manufacturer of 
Budapest, one Stephen Friedrich, an aggressive 
young man whose vociferous professions of undying 
enthusiasm for the cause of democracy could not be 
suppressed. This same Friedrich elbowed himself, 
after the revolution of October, 1918, into the berth 
of Under-Secretary of War. At the time he was 
leader of the Jacobin wing of the Karolyi party. 
This same Friedrich became, in August, 1919, the 
henchman of the Archduke Joseph, organizer of 
pogroms and patron saint of the White Terror. 

When Karolyi returned from the United States 
he met a friend of mine, a Hungarian priest who 
was, and still is, one of his most ardent followers 
and who has rendered him important services. 
They discussed the personalities Karolyi had met 
among American Hungarians, and among others 



COUNT MICHAEL KAROLYI 209 

the Count spoke with the greatest enthusiasm of a 
certain journahst. 

"Oh, X. is a marvel" said Karolyi. "If I ever 
should want to erect a statue to Loyalty, I would 
use his likeness." 

Even then Mr. X. was known to every novice of 
Hungarian politics as a most dangerous turncoat — 
a man of undeniable gifts but one with whom trea- 
son was a livelihood as well as an avocation, who not 
only joined old causes but also invented new ones 
so he could betray them — a man, moreover, in whose 
family treachery was an inherited passion. 

"That is Karolyi, all over" adds my friend sadly. 

From the moment when he first entered politics 
whole hosts of retainers — journalists, politicians, 
nondescript quasi-intellectuals, lived on him, and 
lived well. 

Some of his friends wishing to damn him with 
faint praise called him the Pure Fool of Hungary. 

If he be that — the accent is on the pure. 

14 



IGNACE JAN PADEREWSKI 



211 



IGNACE JAN PADEREWSKI 



There are two ways of assaying individual suc- 
cess in life. One, the more customary, is to set it 
against the failure of other individuals, to measure 
its height from the sea levfel of human mediocrity. 
The other, the more true, is to compare it with in- 
dividual aspiration. The thing that really counts 
is not what a man has become, but how far that 
which he has become falls short of that which he 
had set out to be. From the point of view of the 
adoring flapper in a concert audience, or the name- 
less young pianist squirming in a callous impre- 
sario's antechamber, the life of Ignace Jan 
Paderewski must appear as an unbroken flight up- 
ward, a pyramid of triumphant genius. In his heart 
of hearts Paderewski knows that his was a life of 
failure, a life whose external brilliancy merely 
deepens the shadow of the internal tragedy. For 
the supreme failure is not the man who failed — for 
him there is still the solace of misjudged genius, 
the indictment of an uncomprehending and there- 
fore undeserving world. The supreme failure is 

the man who set himself a fine aim and achieved 

213 



214 EMINENT EUROPEANS 

something else, less fine; for he lost out with Fate 
not against him, but on his side. 

Ignace Jan Paderewski started out in life with 
two great visions. He saw himself as a great com- 
poser. But, being a Pole, he also saw himself as the 
saviour of Poland — every young Pole of his cen- 
tury did. In his case the two visions united in the 
dream of saving Poland by his music. He 
ended as a virtuoso and an unsuccessful prime 
minister. 

Mythology, tireless pursuer of the great and the 
almost great, did not overlook him. When an in- 
fant — so the story goes — he clambered on the piano 
of his father's drawing room and "produced beauti- 
ful tones." There is probably an old teacher alive 
somewhere, or an old peasant from his father's 
Podolian estate, who predicted that the little flaxen- 
haired boy with the clever dark eyes would some day 
become the liberator of Poland. Such prophecies 
occur in every bright boy's life. Other infants have 
clambered upon pianos and produced tones, more 
or less beautiful; but the prediction is not recalled 
unless borne out by the event. 

At seventeen Paderewski was touring Poland 
and Russia as a pianist. Once he was asked to play 
at the house of a Grand Duke. He refused — he 
would not play for a kinsman of that Czar whose 
gendarmes had dragged his father away from him 
to Siberia when he was only three years old. He 
was a recognized artist, at least within the parochial 
limits set by the broad gauge of the Imperial Rail- 




IGNACe JAN PADEREWSKI 



IGNACE JAN PADEREWSKI 215 

ways, when he in 1884 came to Vienna for post- 
graduate instruction under Leschetitzky, that great 
miller whose mill poured forth an incessant stream 
of virtuosi. But Paderewski disdained virtuosity. 
He wanted to express himself in creation — even 
more he wanted to express Poland, her greatness 
and her sorrow, her hopes and her ultimate, inevi- 
table triumph. He wanted to be a Chopin who was 
not half French in his antecedents and three-quar- 
ters French in his life. 

But he was poor. For a while he taught for star- 
vation wages in various German conservatories. 
And he wanted money — a good deal, and he set out 
to earn it. 

Now one of the popular fallacies is the laboured 
contrast between an artist's and a philistine's out- 
look on money. It is assumed that the artist ipso 
facto despises money and chooses to do without it, 
while the philistine craves it and works for it shame- 
lessly. To be sure, there are artists and philistines 
who live up to this generalization. Yet the real dif- 
ference between the two is not in the importance 
that each attributes to money, but in the use to 
which each puts money once he has acquired it. The 
artist has a clear-cut notion of money's value, and, 
unless he be an ascetic or a sentimentalist, he sets 
out frankly in its pursuit, because for him money 
means a road to higher ends — it means indepen- 
dence. The philistine, having no higher ends, apolo- 
gizes for his own lust for money, all the while 
accumulating it. As a compensation or penance he 



216 EMINENT EUROPEANS 

delights in sob stories, invented by underpaid hire- 
lings, about the purity and bliss of poverty. 
"Elessed are the poor" — that saying affords a great 
comfort to the bourgeoisie. It rocks its conscience 
to sleep. 

Young Paderewski's difficulty was the old diffi- 
culty of the slave with the divine spark in him. In 
Renaissance times, in the eighteenth century, his 
case would have been taken care of by the institu- 
tion of the aristocratic patron. In the nineteenth 
century he could only depend on himself. 

The dilemma confronting, under our order of 
society, the young writer was defined by John 
Stuart Mill in his autobiography. When he was 
eighteen he had made up his mind that he was go- 
ing to devote his life to philosophy and literature; 
but he had to earn a living. He could solve his 
problem either by becoming a journalist — which 
meant making a livelihood out of the things he was 
interested in — or else by entering a government of- 
fice at a fixed and secure, though small, salary, with 
short hours and more or less routine work — a live- 
lihood very far removed, indeed, from his real life's 
work, but one which would leave him plenty of time 
and energy for his avocation. With characteristic 
maturity of judgment young Mill chose the second 
alternative, realizing that by trying to combine the 
pursuit of his higher aims with the winning of his 
daily bread he would only compromise the former. 
The event, as everybody knows, amply justified his 
choice. His case affords an object-lesson to the 



IGNACE JAN PADEREWSKI 217 

young intellectual who chooses journalism as a 
jumping-off board only to realize, in most instances 
when it's too late, that he chose a cul-de-sac. 

Even more difficult is the case of the young 
musician; because for him that technical prowess 
which is indispensable to his success depends en- 
tirely on constant tireless practice. A writer may 
earn his bread and butter by sitting six or eight 
hours a day at an office desk and then may forget 
about it and create a masterpiece in the evening — 
the thing can be done, though it is not easy. 
But a musician, working in the most abstract, 
least easily tractable medium, one which postu- 
lates a tremendous physical pliancy and exacti- 
tude, becomes a slave to his technique. Many 
a musician has been lost between the Scylla 
of technical inadequacy and the Charybdis of 
virtuosity. 

Young Paderewski's craving for money was not 
only respectable in the bourgeois sense — it was 
creditable from the artistic point of view. It showed, 
not that he was less of an artist, but that he was no 
fool. He had an intelligent artist's clear and honest 
conception of the importance of money. Money 
meant independence. Independence meant possi- 
bility of creative work. 

With a healthy contempt for mere virtuosity, 
Paderewski set out to be a virtuoso in order to earn 
money and independence, and then to turn to crea- 
tion. His success was overwhelming — no one was 
more overwhelmed than himself. He was called the 



218 EMINENT EUROPEANS 

greatest pianist of his generation; he certainly be- 
came the richest. 



II 



He had to wait for his turn, but at last it came. 
In 1888 he gave his first concert at Paris. The hall 
was not quite filled, and the affair came near to be- 
ing a failure. At least so Paderewski thought when 
he left the platform that evening. But his fate was 
present among the rows of that scant audience. Its 
messengers were two great conductors, Colonne and 
Lamoureux. They heard the young Pole with the 
oriflamme around his head, and they exchanged 
glances. "Chopin has arisen" said one to the other. 
"A genius." That evening the great change came, 
the great event which is the dream of every young 
artist. Paderewski was discovered. His success 
on the platform was doubled and supported by his 
success in society. He was very handsome, and, 
unlike many of his colleagues, he had flawless man- 
ners. More than that: he had the grand manner, 
and he had an exquisite and broad culture. He be- 
came the idol of Paris, and not only of Paris. From 
that evening back in 1888 up to the Great War his 
artist's career was an unbroken line of successes. 
He became rich, famous, beloved, envied. 

All this was as he had planned and dreamed. He 
had wanted success as a pianist in order to attain 
independence and to become a composer. Success 
now was assuredly here; but where was the com- 



IGNACE JAN PADEREWSKI 219 

poser? He had composed things — a concerto for 
the pianoforte, a symphony, — they were performed, 
poHtely reviewed and pohtely forgotten. As a com- 
poser he never even achieved the third-rate glory of 
a Rachmaninoff. He wrote an opera, "Manru" — 
to the hbretto of Alfred Nossig, a Teutonic melo- 
drama with gipsies, mountain lakes, sorcerers, pine 
forests, curses and philters and murders — the sort 
of thing that does not go in the movies any more. 
It was produced for the first time in 1901 at Dres- 
den and then at Paris; the reviewers said it was 
a fine piece of work, and then hurried to assure that 
Mr. Paderewski was a very great pianist indeed. 
"Manru" was forgotten, just as the symphony and 
the concerto had been forgotten. Not long ago I 
asked for the book of "Manru" at the New York 
Public Library. "Manru — Manru" said the kindly 
old music librarian who makes a point of knowing 
every item of his collection by heart. "It's Pade- 
rewski's opera," I explained. "Goodness, you are 
the first person ever to ask for it," said the librarian, 
shaking his head doubtfully. 

His opera was performed, more or less, by cour- 
tesy, but his Minuet is, as one musical review put it, 
one of the five most popular pieces ever written. 
It took him twenty minutes to do it, and it is a 
charming little piece, no doubt. Ask anybody about 
Paderewski the composer, and the reaction will be, 
instantaneously: The Minuet. Fancy Beethoven 
being remembered as the man who composed An 
Elise! 



220 EMINENT EUROPEANS 

III 

Some one ought to write a book on nationality as 
it affects the character and the fortunes of an author 
or artist. The terrible limitation that nationality 
can be is not at all evident to a Frenchman, English- 
man, German or even Italian, whose national cul- 
tures are little self-sufficient universes and who find 
within those universes their material, method, emo- 
tional satisfaction and external reward. 

A young American of the self-conscious, aware 
variety will understand better what I mean — he 
will realize the burden of his own Puritan, frontiers- 
man and utilitarian antecedents. The idea must be 
still clearer to a Dane or Dutchman who has to for- 
get his own language the moment the train crosses 
the frontier of his country. But the classic cases 
of nationality as a handicap are those of the op- 
pressed and persecuted races — above all, those of 
the Irishman, the Jevi and the Pole. These three 
can never live down their nationality. It stares at 
them from every nook, shouts at them from every 
housetop, mocks them from behind every turning. 
The Irishman, the Jew and the Pole, each lives his 
whole life confined to a closet that has nationality 
as a skeleton in it. 

Of the three the Pole is the most tragic; for the 
Irishman is saved by his wit and humour and 
rationalistic type of mind, and, not the least, by his 
English language ; the Jew is saved by his adapta- 
bility, his self-criticism and his internationalism ; but 



IGNACE JAN PADEREWSKI 221 

there is nothing to save the Pole, archetype of 
pathological nationalism. Moreover, he does not 
want to be saved; like many neurotics, he seeks 
refuge in his affliction. He is an incurable ro- 
manticist. He is willing to face death for his 
country ; but he is not willing to face a fact for his 
country. Self-delusion is the great national vice of 
the Pole ; it is also the cement of his nationality — the 
moment he gets disabused from his dreams he is apt 
to become an alien in his own country. 

Somebody has said that the Poles, as a nation, 
suffer from a redeemer-complex. Intensely Catho- 
lic, the Pole merges in his adoration of his country 
the legend of the crucifixion with the worship of 
the Holy Virgin. Poland is the Virgin, the 
Dolorous Mother; but she, crucified, is also to re- 
deem the world in her blood. But this national 
redeemer-fantasy is duplicated in the individual 
Pole by a personal dream of salvation. The Pole 
believes that Poland, of all nations, is marked off 
to save Humanity, and that he himself, of all men, 
is marked off to save Poland. 

During the century of his bondage, from 1815 to 
1915, the Pole throve on the legend of his country's 
martyrdom. Poland, pure, innocent, magnanimous, 
the land of the free and the brave, the sanctuary 
of all liberty and virtue, was wantonly attacked, 
raped, outraged, torn to pieces, and oppressed by 
her rapacious, wicked neighbours. The story of 
Poland and her enemies was part of the eternal 
struggle of good and evil, of light and darkness, of 



222 EMINENT EUROPEANS 

right and might. But "Poland was not yet lost": 
in the end she was to rise from her dead and triumph 
over her enemies, as sure as the powers of Heaven 
were to prevail over the hosts of Hell. 

Alas! — the findings of history tear this myth of 
Poland to shreds. For centuries her annals re- 
corded nothing but incessant fratricidal warfare of 
her kings with rival kings, of king against nobility, 
confederation against confederation, noble against 
noble, nobility against gentry. In no country were 
burgesses subjected to worse oppression or had 
serfs to suffer worse exploitation and maltreatment ; 
in no country led the nobility a more wanton life of 
private luxury and held the purse-strings more 
tightly where public needs were concerned. Though 
outwardly still great and powerful, Poland was in 
the first half of the seventeenth century already a 
moribund state; the terrible rising of serfs under 
Chmielnicki, in 1648, provoked by the unspeakable 
cruelties of the nobles and avenged by them with 
horrors still worse, was the beginning of an end that 
lasted another hundred and fifty years. From a 
great and glorious past, says Bain, the greatest 
English authority on Poland, the Polish republic 
decayed, by the end of the eighteenth century, into 
"a nuisance to her neighbours and an obstacle to 
the development of her own people." The Polish 
nation "had fallen by the justest retribution that 
was ever meted out to a foreign policy of incessant 
aggression and an oppressive and barbarous domes- 
tic rule," said Lord Salisbury. 



IGNACE JAN PADEREWSKI 223 

The Poles are a baffling race [writes Ralph Butler, an- 
other English student of Polish affairs]. In all Europe 
there is no people, with the possible exception of the French, 
which is naturally so gifted. No one can study Eastern 
Europe without feeling that they are infinitely the most 
attractive of the peoples with which he has to do. . . . 
Their culture is not borrowed; it is original and creative, the 
true expression of their national genius and their historic 
tradition. Yet in the political sphere their genius is unfruit- 
ful. They are of those artists who produce nothing. Their 
conceptions are brilliant, but they have no technique, and do 
not see the need of it ; and they never finish their work. Their 
political capacity is, as it were, negative. . . . Lack of 
positive qualities, of discipline on the one hand and of 
moderation on the other, brought them to their fate in the 
eighteenth century. . . . Faction ruined Poland. Faction 
was the case of the partitions. Faction made a failure of 
the two insurrections in the nineteenth century. 

In 1914 Paderewski, wealthy, successful, and, 
for all the world knew, happy, was living in his 
idyllic retreat near Morges, in Switzerland, on Lake 
Leman. He had a large, comfortable dwelling for 
a home (he had originally wanted to purchase some 
picturesque medieval chateau, but his wife preferred 
plumbing to romance, and her counsel prevailed). 
He had an orchard ; he kept bees ; he was interested 
in fancy poultry. There were seven pianos in the 
house, and among other objects of art several can- 
vases by Fragonard, his favourite old master. He 
had exquisite wines in his cellar, and visitors carried 
the fame of his cuisine to the farthest corner of that 
world in which such things as cuisine are discussed. 



224 EMINENT EUROPEANS 

When the war broke out Poles all over the world 
were gripped by a feverish hope : the hour for whose 
advent they had prayed for a century struck at last ! 
They did not exactly know in what way and by what 
means the war was to bring about the deliverance of 
Poland; the tendency toward a clear definition of 
ways and means was never a Polish quality. But 
a certain confused tenacity of purpose was ever 
since 1815 a very Polish quality, and from August 
1, 1914, Polish patriots held themselves ready for 
the long-awaited emergency. 

In 1915 Paderewski started at Geneva, with 
Sienkiewicz, the novelist, the Polish Relief Fund. 
It was a great success, and in that success the lion's 
share was due to Paderewski, his tireless, self-sac- 
rificing industry, his organizing ability, his tremen- 
dous prestige. He contributed his money, his time, 
his art, his sleep, his health to the cause. Then he 
came to America. 

The four million American Poles were the great- 
est single asset in the struggle for Polish restoration 
that had now definitely begun. They had numbers ; 
they had money; they had an excellent framework 
of organization. But the ancient curse had pursued 
them across the ocean: they were torn by factions. 
"Two Poles and a sofa make a political party" says 
the malicious but truthful proverb. Among Ameri- 
can Poles the pro-Ally orientation which saw in 
Prussia the most dangerous obstacle to Polish 
independence fought tooth and nail the pro-Aus- 
trian orientation which, while far from loving the 



IGNACE JAN PADEREWSKI 225 

Germans, regarded Russia as the arch enemy. The 
latter school was, all things told, justified by the 
past ; the former was to be borne out by the future. 
In the meantime both great parties were rent 
asunder by a multiplicity of petty factions, personal 
rivalries, parochial jealousies; their often uncoordi- 
nated, clashing efforts neutralized one another. 
There was one man, and one only, who could bring 
order and unity into this chaos: the greatest living 
Pole, Paderewski. He crossed the Atlantic, and 
although he failed to restore complete unity (after 
all, Poles were Poles) , his tremendous prestige and 
his tireless work secured ascendency to the pro- 
Ally group, managed from Paris by an extremely 
able politician, Roman Dmowski, former member 
of the Russian Duma, a junker of junkers and 
diplomat of diplomats. 

IV 

Paderewski's arrival in America virtually marked 
the end of his career as an artist, and the beginning 
of his career as a statesman. He gave several con- 
certs for the benefit of his relief fund; but his art 
was now a mere subsidiary of his political aims, 
until he gave up the piano altogether. But his pres- 
tige as an artist, while his principal asset, implied 
also a grave handicap. Americans may worship an 
artist — a successful one, that is, as measured by 
standards of external success — but it is very diffi- 
cult for them to take an artist seriously. 

In any country the pianist turned, overnight, 

IS 



226 EMINENT EUROPEANS 

politician would have met with a kind of polite 
diffidence, amused expectancy. In America, where 
a pioneer community attached a slighting connota- 
tion to the very word "artist" as something effemi- 
nate and being per se in the way of a joke, Pade- 
rewski's position would have been untenable but for 
the general fermentation of minds, the popular 
acquiescence in new unheard-of makeshifts brought 
about by the war. In an age of portents Pade- 
rewski's metamorphosis slipped by the established 
notions of Main Street. But it did not slip by alto- 
gether unobserved. We have an excellent record of 
a more or less general view of Paderewski's trans- 
formation in a chapter of Mr. Robert Lansing's 
book "The Big Four and Others at the Peace Con- 
ference." The document is important both because 
it furnishes a vivid picture of Paderewski the fighter 
and diplomat and because it sheds a ray of light on 
the mind of America's Foreign Minister in the most 
fateful period of her history. 

Mr. Lansing tells us that his first impression of 
Paderewski the statesman, gained when the latter 
visited him repeatedly at Washington during the 
war, was rather unfavourable, because Paderewski 
was a great pianist, "the greatest, indeed, of his 
generation," Mr. Lansing believed, and yet this 
pianist engaged in politics, which was none of his 
damned business. 

"I felt that his artistic temperament, his passionate devo- 
tion to music, his intense emotions, and his reputed eccentrici- 



IGNACE JAN PADEREWSKI 227 

ties indicated a lack of the qualities of mind which made it 
[Mr. Lansing means to say, 'would have made it'] possible 
for him to deal with the intricate political problems" 

on whose solution hinged the fate of indepen- 
dent Poland. Mr. Lansing could not avoid "the 
thought that his emotions were leading him into a 
path which he was wholly unsuited to follow." 

To be sure, no such misgivings worried Mr. Lan- 
sing, at that moment, as to the emotional fitness of 
Mr. Wilson for the part he had assumed. But then, 
Paderewski's exterior was against him. 

"With his long flaxen hair, sprinkled with gray and brushed 
back like a mane from his broad white forehead, with his 
extremely low collar and dangling black necktie accentuating 
the length of his neck, with his peculiarly narrow eyes and 
his small moustache and goatee that looked so foreign" 

Paderewski appeared to this statesman of Main 
Street everything that a politician should not be, 
a man "absorbed in the aesthetic things of life 
rather than in practical world politics." 

Later developments showed that gentlemen who 
wore no goatees and who had nothing to do whatso- 
ever with the "aesthetic things of life" were quite 
capable of making a frightful mess of practical 
world politics; but at this particular juncture 
Mr. Lansing could still afford that pleasant sense 
of superiority which made him feel that in deal- 
ing with Paderewski he had to deal with "one given 
over to extravagant ideals, to the visions and 



228 EMINENT EUROPEANS 

fantasies of a person controlled by his emotional 
impulses rather than by his reason and the actuali- 
ties of life." He could not help thinking that 
Paderewski lived "in a realm of musical harmonies 
and that he could not come down to material things 
and grapple with the hard facts of life." 

All of which, of course, was the typical Anglo- 
Saxon prejudice against a man who wore an ex- 
tremely low collar with dangling black necktie and 
was interested in "the esthetic things of life." It 
did not occur to Mr. Lansing, as yet, that it was 
quite as dangerous for a statesman to live in a realm 
of legal abstractions as in one of musical harmonies. 
However, don't let us digress. 

This first impression that Mr. Lansing had con- 
ceived of Paderewski was superseded by an entirely 
different one at Paris. His second impression, in- 
deed, Mr. Lansing avers, was rather in the nature 
of a conviction, and a conviction that he still holds 
— or held, at any rate, at the time of writing his 
book. It was to the effect that Paderewski was "a 
greater statesman than he was a musician," and that 
his emotional temperament never controlled the 
soundness of his reasoning power. Mr. Lansing at 
Paris extols just those qualities in Paderewski 
whose lack alarmed him so at Washington: his 
poise of character, his conservative judgment, his 
calm and unexcitable manner at the table of dis- 
cussion. 

This change of opinion is an excellent illustration 
of the typical American unfitness to deal with in- 



IGNACE JAN PADEREWSKI 229 

tricate European character and background. What 
Mr. Lansing distrusted in Washington were the ex- 
ternal attributes of the artist and foreigner. In 
Paris the amenities of intimate contact prompted 
him to improve his opinion, and he rushed to the 
opposite extreme with a characteristic inelasticity 
that admits of no gradations, with that American 
colour-blindness which knows of no greys and yel- 
lows and purples and greens, but which conceives 
this world as a neatly designed pattern of blacks 
and whites. In all fairness I ought to add that if 
this mental stiffness is American, so are the gener- 
osity and grace which hurry to acknowledge a 
former mistake. 

But, alas! — such was Mr. Lansing's luck — no 
sooner did he amend his first impression of Pade- 
rewski than it became true. It was his first impres- 
sion that had been realistic, even though its 
motivation was sentimental; it was the second im- 
pression that was sentimental, even though it was 
disguised by matter-of-factness. At Paris Mr. 
Lansing thought that Paderewski was a statesman 
and not a mere artist because he refrained from 
playing sonatas in the council room. But observe: 
the qualities that Mr. Lansing praises at Paris are 
the same as he despises at Washington : they are but 
different aspects and names of Paderewski's extra- 
ordinary suavity of temper and manner, a suavity 
that, like his goatee, was so foreign to the American 
philistine. It was this suavity that Mr. Lansing 
at last came to mistake for statesmanship. 



230 EMINENT EUROPEANS 

What wrought the change? Mr. Lansing made 
the strange discovery that Paderewski was honest; 
that he told the truth. An unexpected quahty, in- 
deed, in a man who wears long hair and a goatee! 
What Mr. Lansing ignored was that Paderewski 
was a Pole, and that the truth-telling of a Pole is 
more unreal than the lie of, say, a Frenchman. Mr. 
Lansing knew nothing of Polish history; he knew 
nothing of Polish character. 

Even Mr. Lansing must have suspected that 
there was something wrong with some of Paderew- 
ski's assertions, for he took occasion to emphasize 
that if the latter misstated a fact he did so not by 
deliberate purpose but owing to incomplete knowl- 
edge of or erroneous information upon the subject. 
I am inclined to disagree with this diagnosis, not 
as though I wanted to impugn in the slightest Mr. 
Paderewski's good faith — he is one of the sincerest 
and most honest of men — but because I know that 
his factual knowledge of Polish history and politics 
was remarkable. No, where Mr. Paderewski failed 
was not on the point of knowing facts, but of inter- 
preting them and setting them in their proper 
perspective. 

Once in the mythical age before the Great War 
Mr. Paderewski spoke of what he called a consti- 
tutional defect common to all Poles — arrhytlimia, 
or uneven heartbeat, which, he said, causes his 
countrymen to live in a perpetual state of tempo 
ruhato. It is this physiological fact, he asserted, 
which explains Polish moodiness, Polish unrest, 



IGNACE JAN PADEREWSKI 231 

Polish incapacity of steady effort. That sounds 
convincing — one may discover that chronic tempo 
ruhato in Chopin's music, in Paderewski's playing, 
in the prose of the greatest Polish novelist, Joseph 
Conrad — as well as in the minutes of any Polish 
political organization. But arrhythmia is not the 
only Polish national disease. There is another that 
affects the eyesight — a peculiar Polish brand of 
astigmatism that gives Poles a pitifully distorted 
view of themselves and their history. 

In 1916 Paderewski made a speech at Chicago in 
behalf of his Polish relief campaign. He dwelt on 
the historic glory of Poland, painted in glowing 
colours her greatness and her suffering, and then 
spoke of the liberal reforms of Stanislaus Ponia- 
towski, the last Polish king, enacted by the diet of 
1791. He enumerated the measures alleviating 
serfdom and preparing for its final abolition; the 
enfranchisement of burgesses, compulsory popular 
education under a system of state schools, the equal- 
ity of all Polish citizens before the law, the introduc- 
tion of hereditary monarchy — a most necessary and 
essentially democratic reform, as most of Poland's 
woes had been due to the oligarchic rivalries center- 
ing around the election of kings; and the abolition 
of the greatest curse of all, the liberum veto. Then 
he referred to the calumnies spread by Poland's 
enemies, and wound up : "All these momentous re- 
forms were accomplished without revolution, with- 
out bloodshed, by unanimous vote, in a quiet, most 
dignified way. Does it prove our dissensions? does 



232 EMINENT EUROPEANS 

it prove our anarchy? does it prove our inability to 
govern ourselves?" 

Alas! It does prove all that, and worse. For 
there were just three trifling details concerning the 
reforms of 1791 that Paderewski failed to men- 
tion. First, that the reforms were "put over" by 
the king — an intelligent and well-meaning though 
weak ruler, far exceeding in statesmanship the 
oligarchy which fought him — through a coup d'etat 
in the face of a fatuous and confused opposi- 
tion. Second, that at the very moment when 
the reform was enacted Prussian, Russian and 
Austrian armies were poised to jump at Poland's 
throat, and that the reform itself was an eleventh- 
hour attempt to remedy the evils which had 
brought about the partition. Third, that within 
a year of its adoption the new constitution was 
abolished by a coup of a handful of Polish magnates 
who invoked the aid of Russia to deal this death 
blow to Polish freedom. 

I have analyzed this sample of Paderewski's 
patriotic eloquence because it is so typically Polish 
and because it illuminates the ideology which he and 
with him so many of his compatriots brought into 
play in their attempt to solve the problems of their 
country. Like the Bourbons, the Poles had learned 
nothing and forgotten nothing. But this time they 
could not thwart their good luck; they could not 
arrest a drift of events which, by destroying both 
the Prussian and the Russian empires, automati- 
cally restored Poland to independent statehood. 



IGNACE JAN PADEREWSKI 233 

V 

The end of the war came, and Bismarck's 
prophecy was fulfilled. The White Eagle of 
Poland was soaring high again on the day when the 
Black Eagle of Prussia was smitten dead. Once 
more there was a government at Warsaw ; once more 
there was a Polish army. Paderewski went to Eng- 
land; there he boarded a British cruiser which was 
to take him to Danzig. When he went on board the 
sun was just setting; against the dark red waters 
the body of the cruiser, covered with seagulls, stood 
out in glaring whiteness — the national colours of 
Poland ! Paderewski's eye caught the name of the 
ship, glittering in gilt letters on her bow: "Con- 
cord." A good omen, said Paderewski. 

He arrived at Warsaw, and found twenty parties 
in the Diet, an Armageddon of factionalism, of 
petty personal and local rivalries — in a word, a 
truly Polish foregathering. He also found General 
Pilsudski in the seat of supreme power — a man at 
least as remarkable as himself, with a career typi- 
cally Polish and reminiscent of the old national 
heroes. He had been a revolutionist by profession, 
had been sent to Siberia, escaped, lived in exile, 
formed conspiracies. At the outbreak of the war 
he organized a Polish legion to fight on the Austrian 
side against Russia — was then arrested and im- 
prisoned for refusing obedience by the Germans. 
He was a fine romantic type of soldier; he was an 
astute politician; he was the idol of the army. His 



234 EMINENT EUROPEANS 

rivalry with Paderewski ended by a compromise: 
he was made, not President, but merely Chief of 
State, a provisional dignitary; Paderewski became 
his first Premier. 

It cannot be my aim to enter here on a detailed 
account of the hopeless muddle of Polish politics 
which for the next year was the scene of Paderew- 
ski's activities. He endured it for a year — he sacri- 
ficed the last remnants of his wealth, his nervous 
energy, his hopes. In December, 1919, he resigned 
— every word of his uttered since breathes disillu- 
sionment. He had sold his piano. He returned to 
America just before the Polish politicians launched 
on their mad adventure against Russia that ended 
when the French General Weygand stopped the 
armies of Trotzky within a few miles of Warsaw's 
gates. 



VI 



Paderewski the composer gave up his career for 
Paderewski the pianist ; Paderewski the pianist sac- 
rificed his art for Paderewski the politician ; Pade- 
rewski the politician gave his everything for his 
beloved Poland, including his dreams. When 
the politician finished Paderewski had nothing 
left. 

There are those who suspect him of secret selfish 
ambitions and who regard his ultimate downfall as 
just retribution for pride. This feeling may be a 
reaction to the cult of Paderewski, the sentimental 



IGNACE JAN PADEREWSKI 235 

hero-worship which was fashionable during the war 
in certain American circles ; it may be a reaction to 
some of his political views, which in their lack of 
moderation and historic sense were not at all indi- 
vidual, just typically Polish. It is an unfair and 
unfounded suspicion. People who sit in judgment 
over him in that manner miss altogether the essen- 
tial fineness of his character, his real devotion to the 
cause, his very palpable sacrifices. Again, it has 
been suggested that the motive power for his politi- 
cal career was furnished by his wife. His second 
wife, rather, for Paderewski had been married at 
. eighteen and lost his girl- wife at nineteen — she was 
survived by a son born paralyzed, who lived only a 
few years. Much later Paderewski married for a 
second time, a Russian woman by the name of 
Baronne de Rosen and who had been the wife of a 
violinist, the Count Ladislas Gorski. The second 
Mme. Paderewska contributed to his career as a 
business manager and publicity expert. She was 
shrewd and ambitious. Though (or because) she 
did not know much about Poland she sensed un- 
limited possibilities. Once in the agitated days of 
1918 an American friend of mine dined in their 
apartment in New York. They were a party of 
four, with Paderewski's young Polish girl secretary. 
A salad was served : Mme. Paderewska, drawn out 
by general approbation, avowed authorship. The 
secretary grew eloquent. "This salad is fit to be 
eaten by a King — by the King of England" she 
said. Whereupon Mme. Paderewska, with the quiet 



236 EMINENT EUROPEANS 

seriousness of a matured conviction: "But it is be- 
ing eaten by a King — the King of Poland." 

No, Paderewski did not become King of Poland. 
At the age of sixty-two he lives the quiet life of a 
retired man of affairs on his California property at 
Paso Robles ; his flaming hair has turned grey, and 
so have his glowing dreams. He has but one hope 
left: that some day oil will be struck on his estate, 
and then he will become rich once more — he still 
wants to be rich, but today, as in the gone-by days 
of his youth, he wants to be rich only in order to 
serve an ideal — he wants to aid his beloved Poland. 

For Paderewski is, first and last, in what he 
achieved and in what he fell short, a Pole, son of 
the most brilliant and most futile race in Christen- 
dom. By hitting a mark his life missed its aim ; his 
success proved more barren than the failure of 
others; for a moment his art conquered the world, 
and when he dies he will be remembered by a minuet. 



EDWARD BENES 



237 



EDWARD BENES 



One of these days somebody will sit down and 
write a history of the "ifs" of the great war. Some 
of the larger "ifs," to be sure, have been threshed 
out as, for instance, "if the British had persevered 
at Gallipoli for another day or two"; "if the tank 
had been adopted on the western front in 1916"; 
"if Germany had refrained from suicide by sub- 
marine," etc. But there was a number of less ob- 
vious and spectacular, yet in their smaller way no 
less important, "ifs" which have hitherto escaped 
public notice. For the encouragement of enter- 
prising young historians, the following "minor if" 
is herewith submitted: "If on a certain night in 
August, 1915, a dog had barked at a certain spot 
on the Czech-Bavarian frontier, what difference 
would it make today for the prospects of Central 
European consolidation?" 

That, to say the least, sounds rather mysterious. 
But it is not the purpose of the writer to build up 
an international detective story around the fateful 
omission of an unsuspecting Austrian dog which, to 
tell the truth, may never have existed at all. The 

239 



240 EMINENT EUROPEANS 

suspense of the reader will be cut short instantly. 
Had the supposititious canine barked on that par- 
ticular August night in the locality in question, 
the suspicions of the Austrian sentry guarding the 
frontier might have been aroused; he might have 
investigated and alarmed his colleagues. But the 
dog — if there was one — failed to bark; the sentry 
remained undisturbed as he stood there, leaning on 
his rifle and dreaming of a bowl of Szegediner 
goulash or spareribs with sauerkraut, as the case 
might be, and a young and slender professor of 
sociology could continue the uncomfortable and un- 
dignified but highly timely process of crawling on 
his knees through the thick underbrush across the 
Bavarian frontier. Presently he was on German 
soil — not yet in safety, but the worst was over — the 
road to Switzerland was open. 

Today the young and slender professor of 
sociology who had the good fortune of not being 
observed in the course of his somewhat constrained 
progress is one of the leading statesmen of Europe 
and the world. He is Dr. Edward Benes, Prime 
Minister of the Czechoslovak Republic, and in all 
likelihood its next President, master mind of the 
Little Entente, one of the engineers of the Genoa 
Conference and, above all, one of the four or five 
foremost exponents of international common sense. 
By many authorities, with whom the writer finds 
himself in accord, he is regarded as the greatest and 
most promising practical statesman on the Euro- 
pean Continent today. 




EDWARD BCNES 



EDWARD BENES 241 

In August, 1915, the young professor of sociol- 
ogy had very excellent reasons to choose the rather 
unusual method, above described, of travelling 
from Austria to Germany. The Austrian Empire 
had made up its mind, such as it was, to destroy 
him. There was some justification for this decision, 
as Dr. Benes, on his part, had made up his mind to 
destroy the Austrian Empire. It was a sort of race, 
with the odds heavily against the young professor. 
From August, 1914, to August, 1915, only an ex- 
tremely innocent life insurance company would have 
underwritten his policy. But he eluded his enemies 
just in the nick of time: the warrant for his arrest 
had been signed. Once in Bavaria, where nobody 
knew him, he used a forged passport. Everything 
is fair in war, and young Dr. Benes was at war with 
the Austrian Empire. He got safely into Switzer- 
land, where he joined another professor, also a 
refugee — Thomas Garrigue Masaryk. It proved 
to be a very good combination. In the end 
the two between them destroyed the Austrian Em- 
pire which had sought to destroy them and their 
people. 

II 

The eminent American historian, the late George 
Louis Beer, called Edward Benes, in the days of 
the Paris conference, the greatest of the younger 
statesmen of Europe. The antecedents of the man 
who earned this emphatic epithet from such a con- 
servative authority had been anything but brilliant. 

i6 



242 EMINENT EUROPEANS 

Edward Benes, like his beloved master Masaryk, 
rose to a leading place in the affairs of this world 
from and through the darkest poverty. He was 
born in 1884, one of five children of a Czech peas- 
ant. Young Benes had to starve his way through 
college. Incidentally, he was, unlike many great 
Europeans, not of the bookwormish, pampered kind 
of teacher's pet. He was a star football player — 
association football is the great national game in 
Bohemia — a confirmed fighter, on the whole, the 
sort of chap who squeamish European pedagogues 
usually predict will not end well. At the same 
time he was a passionate reader of serious literature. 
Under the influence of his brother he became a 
Socialist. His chief interest was philology. His 
linguistic achievements were useful to him later, 
when, as Foreign Minister of Czechoslovakia, he 
could discourse at the Paris Conference with equal 
ease in French and English. He could have added 
half a dozen languages had there been a call for 
them. 

It was in Prague University that he, like many 
hundreds of his contemporaries, came under the 
spell of Professor Masaryk. The latter's influence 
turned him from philology to philosophy and 
sociology. In 1905 Benes went to France to study 
in the Sorbonne at Paris and in the University of 
Dijon. His stay in France was a continuous strug- 
gle for a miserable living. He wrote for Czech 
newspapers and magazines for a pittance, and 
felt bitterly the soul-crushing handicap which 



EDWARD BENES 243 

poverty imposes on a man bent on study and 
thought. 

His sojourn in France had an extremely impor- 
tant bearing on his future. He became imbued with 
the Western spirit, with Western political, economic 
and cultural ideals. He was, of course, an ardent 
Czech nationalist ; but his Westernism meant break- 
ing away from the orthodox school of Bohemian 
patriots who looked for the spiritual salvation and 
political deliverance of their country toward Holy 
Russia. The Westernist school, of which Masaryk 
was leader and Benes now became a faithful fol- 
lower, professed, on the other hand, that a thousand 
years of close contact with Western Christianity 
and with Latin and German civilization had made 
the Czechs a Western nation. Writes Professor 
Robert J. Kerner : 

Benes became a believer in the West, in France, in the 
fact that Western Europe and America, not Russia, repre- 
sented progress. He became filled with the idea that his 
own nation must learn from the West and not from the 
East; that like the West it must depend on realism — it 
must know how to do things, it must learn to observe, to 
analyze, to contemplate, sanely. It must not remain romantic 
as the other Slavs.* 

Europeanism instead of Pan-Slavism became the 
watchword of the Realist school. 

* "Two Architects of New Europe: Masaryk and Denes." By 
Robert J. Kerner, Ph.D. The Journal of International Relations, 
Vol. 12, No. 1. 



244 EMINENT EUROPEANS 

In 1908 Benes returned home and became in- 
structor in sociology, first in a college and later in 
the university. For the next five years he led the 
quiet life of a scholar and author. But a few days 
after the outbreak of the war he called on Masaryk 
with a memorandum outlining a complete plan of a 
Czechoslovak war for liberation — first, passive re- 
sistance at home and co-operation with the Allies 
abroad, culminating in revolution. 

Masaryk went abroad. Benes stayed at home and 
organized the so-called Czech mafia, an under- 
ground society which furnished detailed and ac- 
curate information to the Allies on what was going 
on in Austria-Hungary and sabotaged the war 
efforts of the Dual Empire. He directed this work 
until August, 1915, when he got wind of his im- 
pending arrest by the Austrian police and escaped 
to Switzerland under the thrilling conditions re- 
ferred to above. 



Ill 



Once safely abroad, Benes hurried to join 
Masaryk and became the latter's chief of staff. 
They organized, first at Paris and then in London, 
in Russia and in the United States, the Czecho- 
slovak National Council, which became the prin- 
cipal organ of the struggle against the Hapsburgs. 

The importance of the anti-Austrian political 
offensive conducted during the war by Masaryk, 
Benes and their English and French associates is 



EDWARD BENES 245 

not sufficiently realized. Of that campaign the 
English weekly review, The New Europe, was the 
chief mouthpiece ; Professor Masaryk was the spirit 
and the soul, and Professor Benes the directing 
brain. It was perhaps the most brilliantly conceived 
and executed political movement in modern history. 
Its ultimate idea was this: that there could be no 
peace and uninterrupted progress in Europe as 
long as the political map was not brought in ac- 
cord with the natural map — in other words, as 
long as eighty million people, from the Baltic to 
the Aegean, lived under alien domination fastened 
upon them by the Congresses of Vienna and 
Berlin. 

Masaryk and his followers realized that satisfied 
nationalism was the means and the stepping stone 
toward achieving that economic and cultural, 
though not in the narrow sense political, interna- 
tionalism which alone could put an end to war. 
Some of their followers, as was only natural in the 
heat of the struggle, elevated the means into an end, 
the stepping stone into an ideal. These extremists 
contended that once the aspirations of nationality 
were fulfilled people could sit down and clip the 
coupons of the millennium. This idle dream bene- 
fited only those who for one reason or another de- 
plored the passing of the Hapsburgs and all that 
they were the symbols of. These reactionaries ex- 
ploited the after-war chaos as an argument to show 
that Austria-Hungary was, all things considered, a 
European necessity. Even many hberals, fright- 



246 EMINENT EUROPEANS 

ened by the drastic first effects of the remedy, joined 
in shedding tears for the Hapsburgs. 

Men Hke Masaryk and Benes knew better. They 
knew that the destruction of Austria-Hungary was 
not a solution, merely the indispensable preliminary 
to a solution. They acted on the simple common 
sense proposition that if you have one site, and one 
only, to build upon, you have to raze the old ram- 
shackle firetrap of a house standing there before you 
can erect your up-to-date structure. They had a 
fully articulate program of construction in their 
pockets all the while they were going about demol- 
ishing the old nuisance. It was the program of a 
Europe reformed on the basis of national equili- 
brium, political democracy, reorganization of pro- 
duction and interstate co-operation. It was the 
programme, largely, put forward by The New 
Europe, and some other British and American 
periodicals. 

The story of how Masaryk, Benes and their 
French and English friends organized this cam- 
paign ; how they won over, gradually, the Western 
Governments and public opinion to their plan ; how 
they worked for a united military command and for 
a rear attack on Austria from the Balkans ; how they 
conducted the process of sabotage and "boring from 
within" in Austria itself; how they organized out 
of refugees and exiles three armies, one each in 
Russia, France and Italy; how they lined up the 
financial and moral power of American Czecho- 
slovaks; how, finally, they achieved recognition of 



EDWARD BENES 247 

the Czechoslovak people as one of the allied bel- 
ligerent nations, and of the Czechoslovak National 
Council as a belligerent Government; all this has 
been told and retold many times. Benes's part in 
these transactions was second only to that of 
Masaryk himself. Masaryk travelled — went to 
Italy and England, later to Russia and the United 
States, enlisting with the marvellous power of his 
personality the aid of Governments and peoples; 
while Benes remained in Paris in charge of the 
headquarters of the National Council, directing the 
tremendous technical work of the organization. 

One of the first victories won by Benes at Paris 
was when he announced to the Allied governments 
that within twenty-four hours the Skoda plant in 
Bohemia, the most important cannon and ammuni- 
tion works of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, 
would be blown up. He was met with polite 
doubts. Next day brought the news of the explo- 
sion. Thenceforth the Allied leaders treated Benes 
with courtesy unqualified by scepticism. 

But more important triumphs were to follow. 

Through Colonel Stefanik's friendship with Berthelot of 
the French Foreign Office, [writes Professor Kerner,] Benes 
negotiated the specific mention of the Czechoslovaks in the 
famous Allied Note of January, 1917, in which the Entente 
replied to President Wilson that, among other war-aims, they 
counted as one "the liberation of Italians, Slavs, Roumanians 
and Czechoslovaks from foreign rule." This was the first 
great international success in diplomacy for the Czechoslo- 
vaks. They had obtained international recognition. 



MS EMINENT EUROPEANS 

The incident of the Emperor Charles's letter, 
conveyed to President Poincare of France by- 
Prince Sixtus of Bourbon-Parma, and the subse- 
quent strivings of certain Allied statesmen to detach 
Austria-Hungary from the German alliance 
threatened, for a while, to thwart the Czechoslovak 
campaign of liberation. But the negotiations led to 
nothing. 

It was Benes's task, [continues Dr. Kerner] to point out 
the illusion under which the "separate-peace" negotiations 
suffered. Backed by the achievements of the Czechoslovak 
armies in France and in Russia, and confident of the inevi- 
table failure of the "separate-peace" plans, Dr. Benes nego- 
tiated in the spring and summer of 1918 perhaps the most 
notable diplomatic victory of the whole war. He obtained 
first the consent of Balfour, British Minister of Foreign 
Affairs, and Clemenceau, Premier of France, to complete 
the break-up of Austria by having them recognize the Czecho- 
slovaks an allied and belligerent nation. It was for that 
reason that the French publicist, Fournol, declared: "Benes 
has destroyed Austria-Hungary." 

In carrying out their programme and obtaining 
Allied sanction for its various etapes Masaryk 
and Benes had to combat a powerful pro-Austrian 
clique both at London and Paris. Most formidable, 
however, among the opponents of the Czechoslo- 
vak leaders was the Italian government, which, 
under the direction of its Foreign Minister, Baron 
Sonnino, worked with all its might against the 
plans of the Austrian Slavs — both Czechs and 
Jugoslavs. But at the decisive moment Benes, the 



EDWARD BENES 249 

young professor, defeated Sonnino, the veteran di- 
plomatist, and the Czechoslovak National Council 
was recognized as a de facto belligerent. 



IV 



The Austrian debacle in October, 1918, found 
Benes fully prepared for the emergency. Masaryk, 
elected President of the Republic while still in New 
York, hurried to Prague. Benes was appointed 
Foreign Minister in the first Czechoslovak Cabinet, 
and in that quality he accompanied Premier Kra- 
mar to the Paris Conference. 

One of the most remarkable debaters in this singular par- 
liament, [writes Dr, Dillon*] where self-satisfied ignorance 
and dullness of apprehension were so hard to pierce, was the 
youthful envoy of the Czechoslovaks, M. Benes. . . . He 
would begin his expose by detaching himself from all national 
interests and starting from general assumptions recognized 
by the Olympians, and would lead his hearers by easy stages 
to the conclusions which he wished them to draw from their 
own premises. And two of them, who had no great sympathy 
with his thesis, assure me that they could detect no logical 
flaw in his argument. Moderation and sincerity were the 
virtues which he was most eager to exhibit, and they were 
unquestionably the best trump cards he could play. 

Once his task at the Peace Conference was com- 
pleted, Benes returned home to assist the Presi- 
dent in the arduous work of internal organiza- 
tion. They worked out the domestic application of 

* "The Inside Story of the Peace Conference." 



250 EMINENT EUROPEANS 

their programme so well that today Czechoslovakia 
is a compact little island of culture and prosperity 
amid a topsy-turvy Central Europe. 

But important as his contribution to the remak- 
ing of the European structure had been, it was to 
be surpassed by the role he now assumed in secur- 
ing and developing all that which was sound in 
the fruit of victory and in pruning away its ex- 
crescences. From the beginning, Benes, like his 
chief, Masaryk, set his shoulder against the spirit 
of vindictive nationalism, which would merely re- 
produce the old conditions with the tables turned 
on the old oppressors. Master and disciple alike 
were and are for reconciliation with the Germans. 

The chief danger that threatened Czechoslovakia 
was on the part of the anachronistic military autoc- 
racy that fastened its stranglehold upon Hungary. 
It was against this crazy Magyar revanche and ir- 
redentist ideology that Benes devised and carried 
out the plan of the Little Entente, aligning Czecho- 
slovakia, Roumania and Jugoslavia in a series of 
commercial and military agreements. To a more 
limited extent Poland and Italy also have entered 
this arrangement as the best safeguard of peace. 
Although the principal aim of the combination was 
to prevent Magyar aggression and Hapsburg res- 
toration, Benes always took pains to emphasize that 
the Little Entente is directed against no nation or 
people, and that the Magyars were welcome to join 
as soon as they adjusted themselves to the situa- 
tion. The former enemy, Austria, had already been 



EDWARD BENES 251 

included in the scheme through the negotiations at 
Lana Castle. 

Of course, aggressive intentions are always dis- 
claimed by any alliance of States, and such pro- 
testations need not be taken at their face value. 
But in the case of the Little Entente, as conceived 
by Masaryk and Benes, the disclaimer happens to 
be true. Their idea is to develop the present forma- 
tion into a system of general European co-opera- 
tion — a League of Europe, as it were, imposed not 
from above and without, but developed from within. 
Some well-meaning people in America scorn the 
Little Entente as a mere tool of French militarism 
and an insurance scheme to protect territorial loot. 
They forget that but for the Little Entente the 
military terror of Horthy's Hungary would have 
overrun Central Europe long ago, and the Haps- 
burgs, and even the Wittelsbachs of Bavaria, would 
be restored by Magyar armies. They also forget 
that the influence of Benes has always been cast 
into the scales in favor of the sane reconstructionism 
of British and Italian liberals, and not of the sabre- 
rattling bitter-enders. They forget, finally, that 
Benes was the first Foreign Minister in Europe 
to advocate a dispassionate, soberly realistic treat- 
ment of the Russian question. 

As a first measure of such treatment Benes 
means resumption of trade with Russia. He con- 
cluded a commercial treaty with the Soviet Govern- 
ment, and is prepared to back up Czech merchants 
who want to do business with credit guarantees. 



252 EMINENT EUROPEANS 

He defined his attitude toward Russia in conversa- 
tions with Mr. H. N. Brailsford, the British pub- 
licist, early in the summer of 1922. 

Dr. Benes [writes Mr. Brailsford] told me that he regards 
the Bolsheviks as much the most capable among the Russian 
parties. None the less, he refuses to believe that an essen- 
tially aggressive doctrine can be combined with steady recon- 
structive work, and he bases his calculations on the belief that 
this logical incompatibility (as he sees it) will bring about 
their fall, it may be in 1 or 2 or 5 or 10 years. In the 
interval he is ready to move with a view to gaining positions 
for the remoter future. 

But in no circumstances, he said emphatically, would he 
grant de iure recognition. His reason for that refusal is 
based on internal politics. It would be, he said frankly, too 
much of a triumph for the Czech Communists. He did not 
say it, but it may also be in his mind, that it would strain 
the rather close relations which bind the present leaders of 
the Czech state to the Russian Social Revolutionary party. 
The attitude, in its shrewd realism, is typical of Czech policy. 

Among the most notable achievements of Benes, 
the diplomat, was the settlement of the Czech- 
Polish controversy over Teschen, which not only 
averted armed conflict between the two Slavonic 
sister nations, but actually linked Poland as a semi- 
official member of the Little Entente. Benes's 
share in bringing about the Genoa conference is 
also remembered: it was he who smoothed out the 
apparently irreconcilable disagreements between 
Messrs. Lloyd George and Poincare. That in the 
end the Genoa foregathering was relegated to the 
limbo of missed opportunities is not Benes's fault. 



EDWARD BENES 253 

Today Edward Benes is barely 38 years of age, 
the youngest Prime Minister of Europe, and pros- 
pective President of his country. His possibiHties 
are practically unlimited; his determination to ex- 
ploit them for the common European weal is 
doubted by none. One does not have to exaggerate 
the importance of personality as a directive force 
in history in order to maintain that it was Europe's 
good luck that nothing interrupted the doze of an 
Austrian sentry on a dark August night seven years 
ago, somewhere on the western frontier of Bohemia. 



ADMIRAL HORTHY 



255 



ADMIRAL HORTHY 



He is a handsome man, this Hungarian admiral, 
and he knows it. He is also a practical person, 
and he knows how to exploit his impressive appear- 
ance as a political asset. British and American 
correspondents who have interviewed him since his 
accession to power in November, 1919, rarely fail 
to note the resemblance he bears to Admiral Beatty. 
To be sure, that resemblance increases in reverse 
ratio with the square of the correspondent's famil- 
iarity with the Hero of Heligoland; it is more ap- 
parent to Americans than to Englishmen ; it is more 
apparent after dinner than before. The cuisine of 
the royal castle at Budapest is excellent, and its 
wine cellar is famous. But, whether or not the 
likeness be real, the myth that has grown up around 
it is a very real item on the credit side of Horthy's 
balance sheet. In strange lands, after all, anything 
that reminds of home, however slightly, is a source 
of comfort; and to bewildered Anglo-Saxon re- 
porters, thrown by fate into a country whose psy- 
chology they understand as little as its language, 
the tilt of Admiral Horthy's cap affords one of 

17 257 



258 EMINENT EUROPEANS 

the few links with known reality. The cap is the 
cap of Beatty; whose head the head be is of 
less importance to reporters, overworked priests 
of the great modern cult of the obvious. They 
accept Horthy at the face value of Admiral 
Beatty's cap. 

At a conservative estimate, thirty-three per cent 
of Admiral Horthy's prestige in England and 
America is accounted for by his cap. Fifty per 
cent, say, of it is due to the belief, assiduously 
fostered by a well-organized propaganda, that it 
was he who put an end to the Hungarian commune. 
The remaining seventeen per cent is derived from 
his reputation as Hungary's saviour from the 
Hapsburgs. 

Now, it is true that Horthy is responsible for 
the killing of a great many Bolsheviki, and, as will 
be seen, of a great many non-Bolsheviki as well; 
and laudable though that achievement may appear 
to some, to the unprejudiced mind it is not the 
equivalent of his having defeated Bolshevism. And 
as to Horthy being the man who kept the Haps- 
burgs out of Hungary — well, it is a fact that he 
was present when the sun of Charles's hopes set 
for the last time. Even so was Chantecler present 
at sunrise. But Chantecler, with his sense of humour 
stirred to life at the wrong moment, went down in 
tragedy; whereas Horthy, who has no sense of 
humour at all, but, instead, a very keen sense of 
business, proceeded to present the bill. "For one 
Hapsburg sunset, a blank cheque, drawn by the 




Keystone View Co. 



ADMIRAL NICHOLAS HORTHY 



ADMIRAL HORTHY 259 

Entente on the people of Hungary to the order 
of Nicholas Horthy, Regent." 

The bill was approved, the voucher issued. It 
was not the first instance in Horthy's career that 
he cashed in on a coincidence. 

He is nothing if not unoriginal. He takes the 
patterns for his actions and gestures, like his suc- 
cesses, wherever he finds them. By the way, it is 
not only his cap that reminds of Lord Beatty. It's 
his chin, too. Once he explained to the corre- 
spondent of a New York newspaper that he was 
determined to maintain law and order at all cost. 
(Of Admiral Horthy's conception of law and 
order, more anon.) He quoted a pronunciamento 
he had made to a deputation of workers. " 'Re- 
member,' he had said, 'that I am here to keep order, 
and' — here the Admiral's jaws squared like 
Beatty's, and his fist crashed down on his desk — 
*I am going to keep order.' " Was that squaring 
of the jaw spontaneous, or was it aimed consciously 
at effect? We don't pretend to know. What we 
know is that it scored a full hit. British heroes 
ought to copyright their features. 

Another historic character to whom he paid the 
tribute of flattery's sincerest form is Henry of 
Navarre. To that great Huguenot Paris was worth 
a mass. Budapest was worth another to Horthy, 
descendant of stiff-necked Calvinists. Rumour has 
it that in 1920, on his elevation to the Regency, he 
embraced Roman Catholicism — not unmindful, add 
the malignant, of the provision of Hungarian basic 



260 EMINENT EUROPEANS 

law limiting succession to the throne to Roman 
Catholics. Be that as it may, it is certain that 
Horthy the Calvinist attends mass regularly, and 
he has been photographed kissing the banner of the 
Virgin Mary, ancient emblem of Catholic Hun- 
gary. An emblem not unknown to some, perhaps, 
of Horthy's own Calvinist ancestors, chained by a 
Hapsburg king to Neapolitan galley benches. 

Nor does his patent connection with the Roman 
Church end with this act of homage. Terrible to 
heretics, that Church can be most gracious to the 
returned prodigal. To Horthy belongs the dis- 
tinction, not divulged ere this in English print, of 
being the first Calvinist canonized, albeit infor- 
mally, by Rome. 

That same Catholic renaissance, reigning in 
Hungary since the overthrow of the Soviet, which 
revived the long-abandoned Banner of the Holy 
Virgin, postulated that the Hungarian army be 
provided with a special patron saint. In the bad 
old days of the Austro-Hungarian empire when 
the Hungarian army was less Hungarian than it 
is now, but a great deal more of an army, it could 
get along without such patron saint. But then 
Prussian generals were available for command. 
Today the supply of Prussian generals — and of 
Prussian auxiliary divisions — is shut off as far as 
Hungary is concerned; is there any wonder that 
she seeks support from the powers beyond? Appli- 
cation for a patron saint was officially made to the 
Holy See, which in due time announced the ap- 



ADMIRAL HORTHY 261 

pointment to the post of St. John of Capistrano, 
a Neapolitan monk whose fiery eloquence helped 
the recruiting campaigns of John Hunyadi, scourge 
of the Turks in the fifteenth century. 

Now the appointment of the heavenly captain- 
general pleased the Catholic element of the coun- 
try, but it displeased the Calvinists whose power in 
Hungary, though far less articulate and at present 
rather dormant, is potentially quite considerable. 
For once these Protestants lived up to their name 
and protested against pasting a sectarian label over 
the National Army. This protest did not em- 
barrass the Chaplain-General, the Roman Catholic 
Bishop Zadravecz. If, he said, the Calvinists re- 
sented that the army should have a Catholic patron 
saint — why, it was perfectly simple : there ought to 
be a Calvinist patron saint, too. Would the High 
Presbytery kindly suggest one of its own saints 
for the office of co-patron? The amazed Calvinists 
replied that they were obliged for the kindness, but 
that they had no saints. And now Bishop Zadra- 
vecz had an inspiration. He ordered a large panel 
painted for the church of the Budapest garrison — 
a panel representing in friendly company St. John 
of Capistrano, the fighting Franciscan of Naples, 
with Nicholas Horthy, the Calvinist Admiral. Be- 
tween the two the likeness of Bishop Zadravecz him- 
self was portrayed, evidently a sort of heavenly 
liaison officer. Everybody was happy, except, per- 
haps, the spirit of John Calvin — but then he was 
left out of the consultation. 



262 EMINENT EUROPEANS 

In this triptych Admiral Horthy appears 
mounted on his white horse. That white horse, like 
Beatty's cap, has become a fixture of the Horthy 
myth; like Beatty's cap, it is a plagiarism — its 
spiritual ancestor, as it were, was the celebrated 
black horse of the French royalist General Boulan- 
ger. He rode this white horse when, in Novem- 
ber, 1919, he entered Budapest as a conqueror, at 
the head of his National Army, with the Banner 
of the Virgin waving above his (alas! heretical) 
head. That ride was one of the climaxes of Admiral 
Horthy's career. Official Hungary celebrated the 
event as a great victory over the Roumanians who 
had evacuated the city on the day before. Official 
Hungary disregarded the trifling detail that there 
was no causal connection between the Roumanian 
withdrawal and Horthy's entry. The National 
Army had never had a chance to fire a shot at 
King Ferdinand's troops. They left because the 
Allies at Paris ordered them to. Had the Hun- 
garian Government desired to commemorate the 
event by a special coin, in all honesty the inscription 
should have been: "Afflavit Concilium Supremum 
et Dissipati Sunt" But no special coin was struck, 
and even had there been one, the chances are that 
the inscription would have contained more poetry 
than truth. Servility to humdrum fact is none of 
the vices of the new chivalry that rules Hungary in 
the person of Admiral Horthy. 

There are people, in Hungary and out, to whom 
the idea of a mounted Admiral appears irresistibly 



ADMIRAL HORTHY 263 

funny. Such exaggerated sense of humor is classi- 
fied by the Hungarian penal code, as amended 
under Horthy's reign, as a kind of lese-majeste — 
the technical term is "violation of the governor," 
crimen Icesi gubernatoris. But in the music halls 
of Vienna and Prague, cities outside the jurisdic- 
tion of Hungarian courts, allusions are often heard 
to the mounted Admiral at Budapest, and the tone 
of these references is, I am afraid, rather Oifen- 
bachian. There are, moreover, iconoclasts who 
question the necessity, and even good taste, of wear- 
ing an Admiral's uniform in a country that has as 
much of a seaboard and as much of a navy as 
Switzerland. These ill-mannered people sneer at 
Horthy's promotion lists which usually include a 
few naval appointments — Captain of Corvet So- 
and-So to be Captain of Frigate ; Lieutenant This- 
or-That to be Captain of Corvet, and so on. But 
making fun of this sort of thing is a sign of bad 
breeding in Budapest ; usually only Bolsheviki are 
guilty of it. 

II 

There is one point on which both Horthy's ene- 
mies and his friends emphatically agree: that he is 
the prototype of his class, and the symbol of that 
class returned to power. Hungarians call this class, 
with a word borrowed from English, gentry; 
squirearchy would probably describe it better. 

Up to 1848 this class, together with the aristoc- 



264 EMINENT EUROPEANS 

racy, was the sole possessor of the land and of 
pohtical and civil rights. The serfs — glebce ad- 
stricti since 1514 — paid their tithes and their taxes, 
worshipped God and the landlord, and bred and 
died like cattle. The aristocrats were absentees, 
mostly at the Vienna court, in whose atmosphere 
they were slowly denationalized. In the seven- 
teenth century most of the great noble houses were 
reclaimed from Protestantism by Hapsburg coun- 
ter-reformation. This fact accentuated the cleav- 
age between them and the gentry, which remained 
Calvinist to a large extent. In contrast to the Aus- 
trianized nobles, the squirearchy preserved intact 
the old national customs and traditions, including 
a thorough contempt for the national language; 
up to the nineteenth century, a sort of pidgin-Latin 
was the official and the polite idiom. These gentry 
lived in their manors a life of idleness tempered by 
a little husbandry, a good deal of hunting, eating 
and drinking, and peppered by occasional outbursts 
of rhetoric which they called politics. Upon culture 
they looked down as something alien and therefore 
detestable. They seduced pretty peasant girls and 
administered corporeal punishment to indignant 
peasant fathers. 

Originally their levees-en-masse, called "noble 
insurrections," provided defense for the country 
against external enemies. But gradually these 
levees ceased, and the country was protected by 
professional armies of royal mercenaries and im- 
pressed serfs, the expenses being, conveniently. 



ADMIRAL HORTHY 265 

borne by the serfs who escaped impressment. The 
gentry were in eternal opposition to the central 
government, which they denounced as alien op- 
pression. This also was a convenient arrangement, 
as it afforded an excuse for dodging public service 
and for glorifying passive resistance and political 
ca'canny as patriotism. Even their "stiff-necked" 
Calvinism became by and by not so much a matter 
of religious fervour as a pohtical tradition, a mode 
of teasing the Catholic court. It was the gentry 
who frustrated the enlightened reforms of Joseph 
II, disciple of Frederick the Great and noblest of 
Hapsburg rulers. When Metternich's brilliant 
friend, Friedrich von Gentz said that Asia be- 
gan at the gates of Vienna, he had in mind this 
Hungarian squirearchy, retrograde, narrow and 
cruel. 

The reform laws of 1848 abolished serfdom and 
the nobility's privileges, including exemption from 
taxes, and enfranchised the burghers and propertied 
peasants. That was a terrible blow to the squire- 
archy. Deprived from the fruits of the tithe and 
corvee, they actually had to get up and work for 
a living. But worse things were yet to come. In 
1868 the Jews of Hungary, mostly old settlers 
whose lot had been on the whole fairly good, were 
emancipated. That was the cowp de grace to the 
patriarchial economy. Western methods of com- 
merce, industry and credit were introduced, with 
free competition safeguarded by law. The great 
noble houses with their immense wealth weathered 



^66 EMINENT EUROPEANS 

the storm; some of the more intellectually mobile 
aristocrats even rode the crest of the wave ; but the 
gentry went down rapidly. Unwilling to surrender 
old standards of life, unwilling to learn the new 
profitable pursuits, they sold or mortgaged their 
estates and their emancipation bonds, and squan- 
dered the remnants of their patrimony in wild 
revels, frequently followed by suicide, more often 
by the slow death of genteel poverty in some county^ 
sinecure. On the other hand, the power of the 
Jews, thrifty, provident, quick to learn the new 
Western ways, increased in proportion. At the 
outbreak of the World War Hungary was ruled 
by the alliance of great aristocratic families and 
the new class of industrial and financial magnates. 
The country was still an oligarchy; but the type 
changed from a semi-oriental patriarchal rule of 
the squirearchy to a more Westernized system of 
large scale exploitation. 

The collapse of the Hapsburg empire in Octo- 
ber, 1919, ended this chapter of Hungarian evolu- 
tion. The revolution of October, headed by a 
radical aristocrat, Count Michael Karolyi, was the 
work of two elements which gathered strength in 
the preceding decades of gradual Westernization 
— the bourgeois intellectuals, mostly Jewish, and 
the industrial workers of Budapest. It was a very 
mild affair, indeed, this Revolution of the White 
Aster; its leaders were middle class theorists or 
Fabian socialists; its aim was to establish peace 
with the Allies, friendship with the non-Magyar 



ADMIRAL HORTHY 267 

races, and to reorganize the State on lines of West- 
ern democracy. The aspirations and the intellec- 
tual level of the movement were high ; but it had no 
root in the politically undeveloped masses; it was 
topheavy. 

Had Karolyi succeeded in dividing the great 
estates, with compensation to the old owners, 
among the peasantry, he would have won the sup- 
port of the latter, and would probably have en- 
dured. But the blows of a short-sighted allied 
policy (Les vainqueurs sont tou jours Boches, 
wrote Oscar Jaszi, the brilliant leader of intellec- 
tual radicals) , and of a Russian-financed Bolshevik 
propaganda of returned war prisoners from within, 
undermined his authority. Karolyi fell ; the Soviet 
came into power. But the Soviet had even less 
vital strength behind it than the liberal revolution; 
it was born of despair, a makeshift run by a group 
of stupid, ill-educated adventurers and narrow- 
minded, if honest, dogmatists. Instead of trying 
to win over the peasants, the one real if inarticulate 
power in the country, they did everything to antag- 
onize them. The Hungarian Commune was on the 
point of collapse from inner rottenness when the 
Roumanian attack, at the end of July, 1919, dealt 
it the deathblow. 

The Roumanians entered Budapest, and dis- 
armed not only the Communists, who at this time 
were throwing away their arms voluntarily, but 
also the anti-Communist Trade Unionists. They 
did not disarm the White Guards, formed either 



268 EMINENT EUROPEANS 

beyond the frontiers of Soviet power or at Buda- 
pest, in the moment of the overturn. Three months 
later the Roumanians left, on orders from Paris. At 
that moment the only organized power in the 
country was the army of White Guard detach- 
ments; and these White Guards represented an 
armed class — the Gentry. After a lapse of almost 
eighty years suddenly the Magyar gentry was back 
in the seat of supreme power, unchallenged. It 
was a return with a vengeance — only too literally 
so. Their leader and standard bearer was Admiral 
Nicholas Horthy. 

Ill 

It was in the days of the Soviet regime at 
Budapest that a few hundred officers of the old 
Austro-Hungarian army formed at Szegedin a 
counter-revolutionary government. Szegedin was 
beyond the reach of Bela Kun's power, in the zone 
assigned by the terms of the armistice to the Jugo- 
slavs, and was garrisoned by French colonial 
troops. A cabinet was appointed, or rather ap- 
pointed itself, but this cabinet had no real attribute 
of power except a small volunteer army consisting 
exclusively of officers, on the Russian counter-revo- 
lutionary pattern. It had no constructive policy, 
no programme, no working plan beyond the en- 
gineering of anti-Communist intrigue at Budapest. 
It was financed by French subsidies and by "volun- 
tary" contributions of wealthy Szegedin Jews, 



ADMIRAL HORTHY 269 

whose patriotic zeal was stimulated by visits of 
grim-looking officers carrying, rather obviously, big 
Mauser pistols in their holsters. The one thing 
that forged these men into a potential political 
instrument was their hatred of Bela Kun pnd 
his gang. They might have adopted as their 
motto, "Hang the Bolsheviki — after that the 
deluge." 

But this hatred, this lust of revenge sought out 
the Communists at Budapest only as the nearest 
target at hand, as the scapegoat conveniently sub- 
stituted for a much more dangerous but much less 
palpable enemy. Almost without exception these 
officers belonged to the Gentry, the class dispos- 
sessed from its privileges during the last half cen- 
tury. They were victims of the evolution that 
wound its way through industrialisation toward 
modern Western democracy and reached a pre- 
mature pinnacle in the brief period of the Karolyi 
Republic. In this evolution Soviet rule was a mere 
interlude, a diversion and delay rather than a real- 
ized aim. The more sophisticated among the offi- 
cers and bureaucrats perceived that their real enemy 
was not violent revolution which, after all, could 
be countered by more violence, but democratic evo- 
lution with its subtle and irresistible processes. 
Now the carriers, the agents of that evolution were 
the intellectual and commercial bourgeoisie, con- 
sisting mostly of Jews. But most of the Com- 
munist leaders were Jews, too. Here was a 
coincidence, and in a sense something more sub- 



270 EMINENT EUROPEANS 

stantial than a coincidence, that the leaders of the 
counter-Revolutionists realized afforded a great 
simplification, that could be exploited for purposes 
of propaganda. 

To the great majority of the officers, of course, 
these considerations never occurred. All they could 
understand was that an intangible something, some 
sort of a human earthquake, had swept away the 
foundations of the old Hungarian State with its 
comfortable class privileges, had destroyed the 
Austro-Hungarian army, and with the army their 
own livelihood. All they knew was that if they 
could not be officers and gentlemen, they would 
have to starve. That intangible hostile Something 
now resulted in putting a bunch of "dirty Jews" 
into power. But even before the revolution, it was 
Jews to whom their fathers had mortgaged or sold 
their estates, who had the best lawyers' and physi- 
cians' practices, owned the factories, bought and 
sold the produce of the land, ran the newspapers, 
introduced all kinds of alien notions, French, Eng- 
lish, German, into the country. 

In a word, the Jews were at the bottom of all 
the misery that befell the "historical" class, the chief 
pillar of Magyar nationhood, the Gentry. The 
Jews had to go. The mood of the officers was 
symbolized by one Captain Pronay, head of one 
of the Szegedin detachments, — as the officers' units 
were called — who swore that he would not rest 
until he killed one thousand Jews with his own 
hands. The officers drilled at day — at night they 



ADMIRAL HORTHY 271 

drank to the Day that was to end for ever the rule 
of Communists, Liberals, intellectuals and other 
Jews. 

The commander-in-chief of this officers' army 
was Nicholas Horthy de Nagybanya, Vice-Ad- 
miral of the old Austro-Hungarian navy. He was 
the son of a fairly prosperous Calvinist squire of 
County Szolnok, in the heart of the great Hun- 
garian plain. Young Horthy went in for a naval 
career, a very unusual thing among members 
of his class, who commonly regarded the cavalry 
as the only arm worthy of their choice. The navy 
was a purely Imperial, un-Magyar institution; 
naval officers had to be educated at Pola; they had 
to speak German; they had nothing to do with 
horses ; and thus were apt to become denationalized. 
To this very day Nicholas Horthy speaks Hungar- 
ian with a German accent. His advancement in 
the navy was good. He was assigned to the 
general staff, and later appointed aid to the old 
Emperor Francis Joseph, a rare honour for a 
Magyar and a Calvinist. 

In the war Captain Horthy commanded the 
cruiser "Novara," ominously named after Ra- 
detzky's victory over the Piedmontese in 1848. He 
displayed considerable physical courage, the kind 
of dash which is the mark of cavalry officers of his 
class. It was his squadron that shelled, repeatedly, 
Italian coast cities. He was wounded in the battle 
of Otranto. But his supreme exploit, the one that 
brought him the rank of Admiral was the quelling 



272 EMINENT EUROPEANS 

of the naval mutiny at Cattaro. It was a most 
characteristic exploit in more than one sense. 

The men who rebelled at Cattaro were, like the 
majority of the Austro-Hungarian naval person- 
nel, Jugo-Slavs, Croat-speaking Dalmatians — since 
Roman days among the best sailors in Europe. 
What caused the mutiny is not quite clear — some 
say it was too much Jugo-Slav national feeling, 
others, too much sauerkraut. One day the red flag 
was hoisted on several destroyers and light cruisers 
in the harbor, and officers on board were disarmed. 
A loyal somebody in the land fortress flashed out 
a radio call for help. There was a fleet of German 
submarines in the Straits of Otranto. A squadron 
was dispatched at full speed to deal with the muti- 
neers. The submarines entered the harbour. A few 
shots were fired. The mutineers surrendered un- 
conditionally. When all was over Horthy ap- 
peared on the scene. His cruiser hoisted the 
Imperial ensign; the ship's band struck up the 
Imperial anthem; and henceforth Horthy was 
known as the Hero of Cattaro. He court-mar- 
tialled the rebels and had a number of them shot. 
Soon he was promoted to the rank of vice-admiral. 

When the end came, a particularly odious and 
humiliating task fell to Horthy's lot: he was in- 
structed to turn over the entire Austro-Hungarian 
fleet to the Jugo-Slavs. From that moment the 
Austro-Hungarian navy was a mere memory, and 
Horthy was an admiral only in partihus infidelium, 
having no more to do with a fleet than the Roman 



ADMIRAL HORTHY 273 

Archbishop of Trebizond has to do with his dio- 
cese. A prouder soul might have discarded the 
admiral's uniform, now the token of defeat and 
disgrace; a more realistic spirit would have sought 
new fields of patriotic endeavour, would have 
adapted itself to the exigencies of a situation where 
Hungary's interests lay in forgetting as quickly 
about armies and navies as possible. Not so 
Horthy. He wore his naval uniform when he re- 
tired into the steppes of his paternal estate in 
County Szolnok, and did not re-emerge until the 
formation of the counter-revolutionary government 
at Szegedin. 

IV 

When Bela Kun fell Horthy asked the French 
command for permission to enter Budapest with 
his troops. But they were not wanted there by the 
Roumanians, and the French, none too loath to be 
rid of the boisterous and rather useless auxiliaries, 
allowed them to cross into the Trans-Danubian 
country. Horthy now established headquarters at 
the popular bathing resort Siofok, on Lake Bala- 
ton. The detachments were turned loose on the 
countryside. 

What followed now is comparable only to the 
record of the Turks in Armenia — nothing in recent 
European history furnishes a parallel. Before 
leaving Szegedin Horthy issued to the detachment 
chiefs blanket warrants "to pronounce and execute 
sentence on the guilty." Under the pretext of 

IS 



274 EMINENT EUROPEANS 

searching for and punishing Communists, the offi- 
cers raided and plundered villages, outraged 
women, maltreated and killed Jews and whomever 
else incurred their displeasure. The brutality of 
the acts committed and the flimsiness of the excuses 
proffered surpasses belief. Old grudges were 
settled in a summary fashion. Years ago a dis- 
tressed squire may have sold his harvest to a Jew 
for what he thought was a bad price. Now the 
squire came back, chief of a Communist-hunting 
squad ; he seized the Jew, hanged him and took his 
property. Or else an officer would see a Jew wear- 
ing a new suit of clothes. He would shoot the Jew 
and expropriate the suit. In several places the 
Catholic priests themselves tried to protect innocent 
Jews; they were hanged on the spot. It should be 
remembered that well-to-do Jews had suffered just 
as much under Communism as Christians ; but that 
did not make any difference; they were arrested, 
tortured and murdered. The number of victims 
who perished in these atrocities can be put between 
five and six thousand. I have no space to relate 
these horrors in detail; reliable accounts may be 
found in the files of the Manchester Guardian, of 
Vienna, Prague and Italian newspapers. But I 
have to tell of two incidents which help in rounding 
out the portrait of the Hero of Cattaro. 

One of the terror detachments was headed by a 
Count Salm, a Hungarian officer of Austrian 
descent. He had achieved unenviable fame by an 
exploit at Dunafoldvar, where he murdered a 



ADMIRAL HORTHY 275 

wealthy Jewish merchant, not without having pre- 
viously exacted a ransom for safe-conduct. After 
the murder the Count not only took all cash and 
valuables from the victim's house, but also pulled 
a pair of brand new shoes off his feet, remarking 
that dead Jews needed no new shoes. But Count 
Salm's most substantial claim to a reputation rests 
on the case of the Jewish millionaire Albert Freund 
de Toszeg, member of one of the greatest industrial 
families of Hungary. Count Salm's party raided 
Freund's chateau, near Lake Balaton. Without 
further ado, without even a pretext, the millionaire 
was condemned to be hanged in the presence of his 
wife. The peasants of the village witnessed the 
proceedings in dumb horror; Freund was a kindly 
man, and they all liked him. Count Salm asked 
an onlooker for a piece of rope. The peasant said 
he had none. Infuriated, the Count sent off the 
villagers to search for a rope; after a while they 
returned and said that no rope was to be found in 
the place. Thereupon Salm tore a piece of wire 
from a fence and hanged the unfortunate with his 
own hands. Mrs. Freund fainted; the peasants 
wept; the gypsy band which accompanied the offi- 
cers played ribald songs. 

Now hundreds of other Jews had been murdered 
before this in a similar way, and nothing further 
happened. But this was different. Freund was a 
millionaire and belonged to a very influential fam- 
ily. The case was reported to the Allied represen- 
tatives at Budapest, and an inquiry was ordered. 



276 EMINENT EUROPEANS 

Under this pressure Commander-in-Chief Horthy 
issued a warrant for Sahn's arrest. A search was 
made. A few days later Horthy reported to the 
Alhed Missions that he was very sorry, but Sahn 
had disappeared. All the while Count Salm stayed 
right at headquarters, and dined and wined with 
Horthy every night. 

Some officers captured a batch of Communists 
and took them to the encampment at Siofok. They 
were surrounded by soldiers, terribly beaten and 
ordered to dig their own graves. In the midst of 
this scene Admiral Horthy appeared, mounted on 
his white horse. He rode into the group of pris- 
oners and exclaimed; "You dirty swine, you are 
getting what's due to you." Thereupon he spat 
on them, and rode away. The graves were dug, 
and a firing squad closed the incident. 

These two stories were related by one of 
Horthy's own officers, who, unable to endure the 
horrors any longer, deserted the Siofok headquar- 
ters, and escaped to Vienna. 

I had a friend, a young Hungarian, member of 
one of the oldest families of the untitled nobility. 
He had been educated in England and France, and 
became entirely Westernized, a sincere Liberal. 
During the worst days of the White Terror, I met 
him accidentally in New York. I expressed amaze- 
ment at the behaviour of the noble officers. I said 
that this particular class had always impressed 
me with its handsome exterior, its good manners, 
its high sense of honour. I thought that the 



ADMIRAL HORTHY 277 

Hungarian gentry was composed of gentlemen 
in the English sense, and now these same men 
perpetrated horrors that cannot be mentioned in 
print, horrors from which Red Indians would have 
shrunk. 

He smiled, sadly. "You were wrong," he said. 
"Whatever is going on in Hungary today does not 
surprise me a bit. The dissolution of old bonds, 
the tabula rasa of revolution and counter-revolu- 
tion, have provided at last the Hungarian gentry 
with an environment in which it can unfold its 
latent character without hindrance. If they are 
running amuck, they are only running true to form. 
We have never learned to do anything useful. All 
we can do is to drink, to cheat, to bully the weak and 
to torment and rob the helpless. That's our tradi- 
tion; today is our Golden Age. Scratch the thin 
enamel of the European gentleman, tear off the 
camouflage of the cavalry officer's code of honour, 
and you will find the Tartar savage in us. We are 
the true successors of Huns and Petchenegs. I 
have a right to talk like that — my family tree is nine 
hundred years old, and three of my cousins are 
serving in Horthy's army. I assure you that 
Horthy is our true representative." 

V 

In November, 1919, the Supreme Council or- 
dered the Roumanian army out of Budapest. On 
the day following the evacuation. Admiral Horthy 
led his troops into the capital. Two of his declara- 



278 EMINENT EUROPEANS 

tions on this occasion deserve notice. "I come as 
the heutenant of my lawful ruler and sovereign, 
King Charles," he said. Admiral Kolchak gave 
way to General Monk. A delegation of Trade 
Unionists and Social Democrats waited on him. 
He declared: "I do not negotiate with workers. I 
command and they obey." Horthy is nothing if 
not unoriginal. Budapest had heard those words 
before. In 1849, during the revolution, Field-Mar- 
shal Prince Windischgraetz seized Budapest in the 
name of the Emperor, as Kossuth's Government 
fled to Debreczen. A group of Magyar notables 
called on him, seeking a compromise. The Prince 
was adamant. ''Mit Rebellen unterhandle ich 
nichtJ" "I do not negotiate with rebels." Those 
words — and Windischgraetz's demand for "unhe- 
dingte Unterwerfung f unconditional surrender — 
have burnt themselves into Hungarian history. 
Like at Cattaro, at Budapest Horthy, Emperor 
Charles's lieutenant, stepped into a ready-made 
pose and annexed a ready-made phrase. 

And now came another victory, even more im- 
portant. Sir George Clerk arrived at Budapest as 
Allied High Commissioner and peace-maker among 
the warring Magyar factions. He came and saw, 
and Horthy conquered. He wore a cap like 
Beatty's; he had good table manners; the atmos- 
phere at the castle was pleasant. Sir George 
trusted Horthy. A compromise, insuring two 
places in the Cabinet for Social Democrats and free 
and impartial elections for a National Assembly, 



ADMIRAL HORTHY 279 

was effected. Some Liberals demanded guaran- 
tees. Sir George did not see why guarantees were 
necessary. He had not heard of Count Sahn. He 
had not spoken to the men who dug their own 
graves at Siofok. Sir George said: "Horthy is 
a gentleman." 

Sir George left Budapest. The two Socialist 
ministers were dismissed. The "free and impar- 
tial" elections were held under the auspices of 
machine gun detachments. Forty thousand opposi- 
tion voters were interned, over a score of opposition 
candidates were imprisoned, two opposition editors 
were murdered. The National Assembly convened, 
and elected Horthy Regent. Unanimously. The 
officers of the Ostenburg detachment, who with 
drawn revolvers invaded the floor and the galleries 
of the Assembly just before the session was called 
to order, did not vote. They just furnished the 
setting for the unanimity. 

Once more the Regent emphasized that he was 
a mere lieutenant of the King. "I shall cede the 
supreme power to the lawful King as soon as 
external circumstances permit," he said. Just the 
same — safety first, one never can tell what may 
happen — he made the army swear an oath of 
allegiance to himself. Some elder officers refused 
to swear — they protested that their oath to Charles 
was good enough and accused the Regent of secret 
ambitions to the crown. 

He had betrayed the political traditions of his 
class when he entered the Imperial Navy and 



280 EMINENT EUROPEANS 

joined the Imperial Household. He now pro- 
ceeded to betray his betrayal. He was, professedly, 
the lieutenant of the exiled King, and nothing else. 
At Easter, 1921, the exiled King returned. Only 
four days before Charles's arrival Regent Horthy 
declared in the Petit Parisien; "Hungary is a 
kingdom. In the absence of the King I am the 
Regent. Emperor Charles is our only lawful 
King." 

Four days later King and Regent faced each 
other in the Castle at Budapest. The Little En- 
tente had delivered its ultimatum: Hapsburg 
restoration was to be regarded as a case for war. 
Once more somebody volunteered to pick Horthy's 
chestnut out of the fire. Horthy ordered his "only 
lawful King" to leave the country. Charles obeyed. 
Horthy, who doubtless during the proceedings was 
congratulating himself for having had the fore- 
sight to exact an oath of allegiance from the 
troops, chuckled to himself. He chuckled even 
more, half a year later, when Charles tried his luck 
again. The airplane excursion ended in near- 
tragedy. Czechoslovakia, Jugoslavia mobilized. 
Horthy, at the head of his troops, shelled the royal 
train. Charles was taken prisoner, and was soon 
on his way to Madeira. Europe and America ap- 
plauded Horthy for saving Hungary from Haps- 
burgism. In reality, he only saved his own chance 
to the throne of Hungary. 

In the spring of 1920 a delegation of British 
Labour, headed by Colonel J. C. Wedgwood, M. 



ADMIRAL HORTHY 281 

P., arrived in Hungary to investigate charges of 
the White Terror. Their report, fully documented, 
tells of horrors unspeakable and unprintable. Two 
officers, especially. Captain Pronay (above men- 
tioned) and Lieutenant Hejjas, were found guilty 
of atrocities beside which the worst German deeds 
in Belgium pale. Colonel Wedgwood asked Mr. 
Hohler, British High Commissioner, what he knew 
about these officers. Mr. Hohler said he had been 
informed by the Hungarian Government that 
Pronay and Hejjas had been "demobilized." Col- 
onel Wedgwood went to the Ministry of War, and 
found that the two officers were still on the army 
payroll. Colonel Wedgwood then inquired from 
Regent Horthy. "They are my best officers," said 
the Regent. 

But then, these officers are very powerful. A 
Pretorian Guard is a most useful instrument, but 
one has to pay the price. Once a delegation of 
Budapest Jews waited on Regent Horthy, who 
received them in state, attended by two officers. 
The Regent was most gracious. He assured the 
delegates that although he disliked bad Jews, he 
liked good Jews, that he knew the delegates be- 
longed to the latter category, and that everything 
would come out all right. At this point one of 
the officers whispered something into his ear. The 
Regent retired to an adjoining room, followed by 
the two officers. A few minutes later they all re- 
turned. But the Regent was a changed man. He 
told, in the harshest tones, the astounded delegates 



282 EMINENT EUROPEANS 

that he expected them to do their duty, that he 
would stand for no foolishness, and that his hand 
would fall heavily on the disloyal. Thereupon he 
clicked his heels and turned his back on the visitors, 
a gesture copied from the old Emperor, to signify 
that the audience was over. God only knows what 
passed between the Regent and his officers — God 
only knows, but anybody can guess. 

Hungary today is the most chauvinistic country 
in Europe. The Pan-Turanian movement, which 
aims at a spiritual and eventually political union of 
Magyars, Bulgars, Turks and Tartars against the 
effete nations of the West, is very popular, and 
Regent Horthy is its patron. He travels around 
in a special train named "Turan." But then, 
Horthy had an Austrian education ; he speaks Hun- 
garian with a strong German accent, and his gram- 
mar is bad. "Le style, c'est Vhomme/' When he 
opened an exhibition of the Hungarian steel in- 
dustries at Budapest, he made a speech, and this 
speech was recorded in shorthand by a Magyar 
journalist who later fled to Vienna. Said Horthy: 
"It's with pleasure I came here to open this 
here industry — er — hm — to open this here exhi- 
bition, which, so to speak, lost more during the war 
than any other — or rather, er, suffered, yes, more. 
It is very nice that you could accomplish so much 
in such short time — it shows only that if we Hun- 
garians want something, we go and get it, yes." 
He stepped to a group of exhibits, and read the 
label aloud. "Exhibit of Debreczen Machine 



ADMIRAL HORTHY 283 

Works." He beamed. "Is this in Debreczen? 
How interesting! Debreczen Machine Works — 
is in Debreczen, yes. I didn't know." Even the 
detectives, his bodyguard, grinned. 

VI 

The German submarines quelled the Cattaro 
mutiny and Horthy was named Admiral. The 
Roumanians destroyed Bela Kun, and Horthy en- 
tered Budapest in triumph. The Little Entente 
eliminated Charles, and Horthy was hailed as the 
bane of the Hapsburgs. He wears his cap like 
Lord Beatty, has beautiful table manners, and Sir 
George Clerk called him a gentleman. What more 
do you want — in Hungary? Friedrich von Gentz 
said that Asia began at the gates of Vienna. 
He was right a hundred years ago. He is 
much more right today. In 1914 Budapest 
was twenty hours from London. In 1921 
Budapest was twenty minutes from Bokhara. 
The Magyar people today is groaning under 
the yoke of Uzbeg chieftains who created them- 
selves a ruler in their own image. That ruler is 
Nicholas Horthy, Turanian Khan who speaks with 
a German accent. Count Salm's friend and pro- 
tector, Calvinist who renounced his faith, Admiral 
who abandoned his ships. Regent who betrayed his 
King. 



EMINENT VICTORIANS 

^y LYTTON STRACHEY 

8vo. With Portraits 

A selection from a host of reviews of this brilliant and 
extraordinarily witty book : 

The New York Times — "There is every temptation to quote from this 
volume, for it abounds in striking stories and brilliant interpretations. 
. . . Mr. Strachey has not written history in the usual fashion, but he 
has made a notable contribution to that prodigious undertaking, the 
history of the Victorian Age.'* 
The Outlook—" Brilliant." 

The Metropolitan — "It is one of the few current books that I would 
specially recommend as worth reading. He is a refreshing, brave, witty, 
and large-minded biographer." — Clarence Day, Jr. 

The Chicago Daily News — " Lytton Strachey can write circles around 
any living biographer; can give handicaps to any living essayist and 
match the most touted workers in the language with one hand tied 
behind his back. . . . When you have read the last line of these soul- 
portraits you are aware of the stark truthfulness of the work. It is not 
only art — it is reality." 

The New York Tribune — " We receive Mr. Strachey's volume with 
gratitude and joy. . . . Profound sincerity of both constructive and 
destructive criticism, sanity of judgment and splendor of spirit make 
this volume a memorable tribute to one of the most memorable eras 
in the history of the human intellect." 

The Chicago Tribune — " One of the outstanding biographical works in 
English literature. ... In a generation that produces one Strachey 
there bob up several thousand professional mourners, who model their 
style and general appreciation of the truth upon epitaphs. . . . Strachey 
wields one of the most engaging pens now employed in literature. His 
humor is unfailing, but always smooth, unforced, ironic. He knows the 
satiric value of hyperbole and antithesis. His book is altogether a 
remarkable performance. ... In his gallery are portraits of familiar 
personages wearing new expressions, and the manner of presentation 
is that of a cultivated and penetrating artist. The volume is recom- 
mended eagerly to all lovers of vivid and daring biography." 
The Springfield Republican— " Mr. Strachey's wit gives stimulating 
piquancy to a style at once brilliant and pure. His power of illuminat- 
ing the figures which he presents is matched by his ability to interest 
the reader in his craftmanship." 

The Hartford Times — " Under his pointed, facile, and illuminating pen 
dry-as-dust facts become of absorbing interest. It is astonishing what 
he can do to make a * life * worth reading." 

The Indianapolis News — "Mr. Strachey has succeeded notably in 
making biography more dramatic and fascinating than fiction." 



New York G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS London 






12th Printing 

The Mirrors of Downing Street 

By "A Gentleman with a Duster" 

8vo. With 12 Portraits 

A selection from a host of reviews of an amazing and 
brilliant volume: 

" Since Lytton Strachey shocked and amused us by his Eminent Victorians, no 
book written by an Englishman has been so audacious, so reckless, so clever, 
and so full of prejudices, apparently based on principles." — Maurice Francis 
Egan in the New York Times. 

"Of fascinating interest, with a style pungent and epigrammatic . . . does not 
contain a dull line ... there is scarcely one of the great controversies which 
agitated British political waters during and since the war that is not touched 
on . . . the author is partisan in his friendships, and he is a good hater, so 
his work is altogether engaging."— A^eu) York Herald. 

"A very serious book, without being heavy, a daring work, without being 
reckless. It is judicial in tone, endeavoring to give each man his due, setting 
down naught in malice or partiality ... a work of keen interest and highly 
illuminating. " — Cincinnati Times-Star. 

"This book of scintillating wit and almost uncanny power of vivid phrase- 
making." — A^. Y. Evening Mail 

"It is a book that every intelligent person should read, dispelling, as it does, 
a nurnber of the illusions to which war conditions have given birth . . . the 
book is one to be read for its light on specific facts and on individual men. 
Often the author's least elaborated statements are the most startling . . . 
it is written with the vim and audacity of Lytton Strachey's Eminent 
Victorians, and it has in addition a very vivid news interest, and it is just 
both in its iconoclasm and in its frank hero worship — of the right heroes." 
— Chicago Post. 

" It is one of the few cases of a startling work being also a fine piece of 
literature . . . the author is obviously on the inside. No merely imaginative 
person could have produced such a picture gallery." — N. Y. Evening Telegram. 

"One of the most mteresting studies that has been presented to English 
or American public." — Troy Record. 

The Men in the Mirrors: Mr. Lloyd George— Lord Carnock— 
Lord Fisher — Mr. Asquith— Lord Northclif fe— Mr. Arthur Balfour— 
Lord Kitchener— Lord Robert Cecil— Mr. Winston Churchill— Lord 
Haldane — Lord Roberts — Lord Inverforth — Lord Leverhulme. 



New York G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS London 



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